Research on Youth

• In 1999, 63 percent of youth (age 15-20) who died in passenger vehicle crashes were not wearing safety belts. (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• Fatally injured drivers who have been drinking are least likely to have been wearing safety belts. (NHTSA, 1999)
• According to Monitoring the Future, a survey conducted by the University of Michigan, 31 percent of 12th-graders reported binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row) in the two weeks prior to the survey; 51 percent reported consuming alcohol.
• Children younger than 5 have higher passenger vehicle occupant death rates than older children do. (IIHS, 1995)
• College students who reported D and F grade point averages consumed an average of 10 alcoholic drinks per week, while those who earned mostly A's consumed slightly more than three drinks per week. (Core Institute, 1993)
• Poor grades are correlated with increased use of alcohol. Alcohol is implicated in more than 40% of all academic problems and 28% of all dropouts. (Anderson, 1992)
• Alcohol kills 6.5 times more youth than all other illicit drugs combined.
• The three leading causes of death for 15- to 24-year-olds are automobile crashes, homicides and suicides -- alcohol is a leading factor in all three.
• Alcohol use is the number one drug problem among young people. (CSAP, 1996)
• Alcohol-related traffic deaths among youth between the ages of 15 and 20 increased from 2,219 in 1998 to 2,238 in 1999. (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• Advertisers spend more than $1 billion each year on alcohol advertisements.
• Youth arrests (for under 18) increased significantly from 1984 to 1993 for drunkenness (42.9%); DUI (50.2%) and drug abuse (27.8%). (FBI, 1994)
• 4.4 million college students are binge drinkers and another 1.8 million are heavy drinkers (consuming five or more drinks on one occasion at least five times in the past month)
• While more than one-third (35.6% ) of the college students surveyed reported to have driven under the influence, only 1.7% said they were arrested. (Core Institute, 1993)
• Traffic crashes are the major cause of death for children in the age group 0-14. Almost one quarter (21.4%) of these deaths is alcohol related. (NHTSA, 1995)
• More than 35% of all 16-to-20 year-old deaths result from motor vehicle crashes.(NCHS, 1997) Estimates are that 2,125 (36.1%) persons aged 16-20 died in alcohol-related crashes in 1999. (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• Youth who drink alcohol are 7.5 times more likely to use any illicit drug, and 50 times more likely to use cocaine than young people who never drink alcohol. (CASA, 1994)
• Between 1989 and 1999, the proportion of drivers 16-to-20 years of age who were involved in fatal crashes, and were intoxicated, dropped 30 percent; 20% in 1989 to 14% in 1999-the largest decrease of any age group during this time period. (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• Of all persons arrested for DUI/DWI nationally in 1993, persons in the under 25 age group accounted for 23.4% of those in the cities, 23.7% of those in the suburban counties and 22.1% of those in the rural counties. (FBI, 1994)
• 75 percent of young teens say that alcohol is easy to acquire. Approximately two-thirds of teenagers who drink report that they buy their own alcohol.
• Underage drinking costs the United States more than $58 billion every year - enough to buy every public school student a state-of-the-art computer.
• White males drink far more than any other group, averaging more than 9 drinks per week. The next highest drinkers are Hispanic males (5.8), white females (4.1), and black males (3.6). Black females average only one drink per week. (Core Institute, 1993)
• In single-vehicle fatal crashes occurring on weekend nights in 1999, 66% of the fatally injured drivers 25 years of age or older were intoxicated, as compared with 56% of drivers under the age of 25. . (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• During a typical weekend, an average of one teenager(15-20) dies each hour in a car crash. More than forty- five percent of those crashes involved alcohol.. (NHTSA, NCSA 1999)
• A study of 81 G-rated animated features from 1937 to 2000 found that nearly half show characters using alcohol or tobacco - sometimes to excess. (Harvard School of Public Health, June 2000).
• Younger people (age 16-20) are most likely, of any age group, to use various strategies, when hosting a social occasion where alcohol is served, to try to prevent their guests from drinking and driving. (NHTSA, 1996)
• Minimum Drinking Age Laws reduce traffic fatalities involving drivers in 18 to 20 years old by 13%. These laws have saved an estimated 18,220 lives since 1975. (NHTSA, 1999)
• 2.6 million teenagers don't know that a person can die from an alcohol overdose. (CSAP, 1996)
• In 1998, about 10.4 million drinkers in the United States were less than 21 years old.
• Nearly one-third of college students surveyed said they wished alcohol was not available at campus events, and nearly 90% wished that other drugs would disappear from campuses. (Core Institute, 1993)
• The proportion of seniors reporting having five or more drinks in a row on at least one occasion during the prior two weeks fell by 0.4 percentage points from 1993 to 27.5%----down from a high of 41% in 1980. (University of Michigan, 1994)
• According to the National High School Senior Survey, seniors reporting any alcohol use in the prior month fell from a peak of 72% in 1980 to 51% in 1993. (University of Michigan, 1994)
• About one-third of all network TV episodes were set in bars, nightclubs or restaurants where alcohol was consumed (ONDCP study of broadcasts between October and December 1998).
• Forty percent of network TV episodes made drinking look like a positive experience, while only 10 percent portrayed alcohol use negatively; only 1 percent of the episodes portraying alcohol usage showed a refusal to use alcohol (ONDCP study of broadcasts between October and December 1998).
• Sixty percent of college women diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease were drunk at the time of infection. (Advocacy Institute, 1992)
• Young drivers make up 6.9 percent of the total driving population, but constitute 13 percent of the alcohol-involved drivers in fatal crashes. (NHTSA, 1999)
• Children younger than 13 represented 19 percent of the U.S. population in 1994 and six percent of all motor vehicle deaths. Child deaths have represented about this percentage of vehicle deaths since the early 80's. (IIHS,1995)
• 41% of the driving age public said they do not know whether or not their state has a different BAC limit for drivers under the age of 21. Those who thought their state had a lower BAC limit for young drivers were asked to say what they thought it was; only 12% of those people cited the correct limit. (NHTSA, 1996)