TEENAGERS AND ALCOHOL MISUSE IN THE UNITED-STATES - BY ANY DEFINITION, ITS A BIG PROBLEM

Despite the fact that move adolescents use alcohol than any other drug , studies of teenage alcohol misuse are relatively rare. Those that ex ist frequently fail to include high school dropouts and often focus on only part of the problem, such as how much or how often the adolescen t drinks. This study examines the prevalence and demographic predictor s of teenage alcohol misuse in a diverse sample of 4390 high school se niors and dropouts. It focuses on three different dimensions of misuse -high-risk drinking, alcohol-related problems and high consumption-and provides prevalence estimates by gender and race/ethnicity that are w eighted to represent the original seventh grade cohort of 30 Californi a and Oregon schools. Results show that by grade 12, nearly 70% of the se teenagers have exhibited some form of alcohol misuse within the pas t year. Two-thirds have engaged in high-risk drinking and over 50% hav e experienced one or more alcohol-related problems. More stringent est imates that require variety or persistence of risky drinking and/or al cohol-related problems still capture between 40% and 54% of this popul ation. However, focusing solely on high consumption fails to identify as many as half of these at-risk misusers. Males and females both exhi bit high rates of alcohol misuse, as do most racial ethnic groups. How ever, African Americans and Asians are less likely to misuse alcohol t han whites and Hispanics. The results underscore the need for includin g different forms of alcohol misuse in prevention programs, for improv ing our understanding of its etiology, and for providing upper and low er bound estimates of alcohol misuse in future research.