Study analyzes underage drinking

EUGENE, Ore. – Alcohol use among minors is highest in communities where it is easy for them to buy it, a new study has found.

The study confirms what has long been apparent, said one of the study’s authors, Joel Grube, the director of the Prevention Research Center in Berkeley, Calif.

“Communities can reduce underage drinking by reducing the number of outlets that sell booze to kids and by increasing enforcement of minimum-age purchase laws,” he said.

Grube collaborated with researchers Clyde Dent and Anthony Biglan from the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene. Their findings were published in the December issue of the journal Preventive Medicine.

The study was based on the 2001 and 2002 versions of Oregon Healthy Teens, an annual survey of adolescent health behaviors conducted by the state Department of Human Services. The survey asks students how often and how much they drink, when they began drinking, how often they’ve had alcohol-induced blackouts, and similar questions.

Seventy percent of Oregon minors get their alcohol from friends, parents or other social sources. Thirty percent get it from convenience stores, supermarkets or other commercial sources, the study found.

Students buying from stores had higher levels of drinking, impaired driving or riding with an impaired driver. Students tended to drink and binge less in communities where they were more likely to be caught by police if they drank.

The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has estimated underage drinking costs the United States $53 billion a year, mainly through loss of life but also through property damage and other losses.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission is doing what it can to crack down on underage drinking, but more needs to be done, spokesman Ken Palke said. OLCC agents this year ran nearly 1,000 compliance checks on liquor-license holders, in which underage volunteers are sent into a store or bar to buy alcohol. Of those, 712 establishments made no sale, and 274 made sales for a 38 percent sales rate.

“We think that’s way too high,” he said.

Pamela Erickson, director of the Oregon Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking and a former director of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, said the study adds weight to policies the state is pursuing.

“It adds a lot of credence to the notion that enforcing our laws really works,” she said. “We’re a state that has excellent (underage drinking) laws. They’re aren’t always well-enforced.”