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Underage Drinking

At this moment there are 301,525,028 people in the United States. How many of those people do you think are under the age of 21? Within that group, how many do you think drink alcohol illegally? We can say from personal experience that at least 95% of youth under the age of 21 drink alcohol regularly or have at least tried a beverage or two at one point or another before they turned or will turn 21. The truth is that each year, approximately 5,000 youth under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking.
Alcohol use by persons under age 21 is a major public health problem. Despite laws against underage drinking in all fifty States and despite decades of Federal, State, and local efforts to reduce underage drinking, alcohol is the most commonly used and abused drug among youth in the United States. In a recent survey, the most popular form of alcohol for teenagers is beer, followed by wine coolers and "hard" liquor (Doweiko, 307). Although drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people ages 12 to 20 years drink almost 20% of all alcohol consumed in the United States (Foster SE, et al. 989 – 995). As children move from adolescence to young adulthood, they come across dramatic physical, emotional and lifestyle changes. Developmental transitions, such as puberty and increasing independence, have been associated with alcohol use. Peer drinking and peer acceptance of drinking have also been associated with adolescent drinking. So in a sense, just being an adolescent may be a key risk factor not only for starting to drink, but also for drinking dangerously.
Underage drinking is deeply imbedded in the American culture. Underage youth find it relatively easy to acquire alcohol (Wagenaar et al., 1996). While individuals under the legal purchase age obtain alcohol from a variety of sources, the National Academy of Sciences Reducing Underage Drinking Report, states that parties, friends and adult purchasers are the most frequent sources of...