Teens Drink Quarter of All Alcohol Consumed in U.S.
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"Earl Evleth" devl...@noos.fr
I think this is a problem in Britain, but generally Latin cultures drink differently, mainly wine or beer. I have never seen teenage drinking mentioned in France. At one time, drinking was a big problem, at the beginning of the 20th century the average consumption was about 2 liters of wine a day! America had a hard liquor consumption problem in the early part of the 1800s, which lead to a strong prohibition movement 100 years before the successful one.
Earl ****** Teens Drink Quarter of All Alcohol Consumed in U.S.
Tue Feb 26,10:06 AM ET By Claire Soares WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Teen tipplers drink a quarter of all alcohol consumed in the United States, encouraged by television ads and parents who see underage drinking as a rite of p***age, researchers said on Tuesday.
To drink legally in the United States you must be 21 but Columbia University's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found 31 percent of high school students binge drink, defined as five drinks in a row, at least once a month.
"Underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions in America ... and parents are too often unwitting co-conspirators who tend to see drinking and occasional bingeing as a rite of p***age," said Joseph Califano, the group's president and a former U.S. secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
Researchers reanalyzed data from the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse to calculate the total number of drinks consumed by 12- to 20-year-olds as a proportion of all adults.
The report found those under 20 drank 63,230 alcoholic beverages a month, an average of 0.9 a day, and slightly more than 25 percent of the 251,194 alcoholic drinks consumed by the sample as a whole.
"Underage drinking also accounted for up to $27 billion of the $108.4 billion in consumer expenditures for alcoholic beverages in the U.S. in 1998," the report added.
UNDERAGE TIPPLES BY BUSH TWINS Teen drinking sporadically hits the headlines, especially when President Bush (news - web sites)'s twin daughters are involved.
College students Barbara and Jenna Bush, 20, attended alcohol awareness cl***es after being caught underage drinking last year.
The Columbia report highlighted the under-15s as an alcoholic trouble spot.
Califano said that since 1975, the number of children who begin drinking aged 15 or under, had jumped by almost a third, from 27 to 36 percent.
"And those who begin drinking before age 15 are four times likelier to become alcoholics than those who do not drink before age 21," he added.
The report pooled data from five different surveys and separately polled 900 adults to gauge attitudes to alcohol with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Nearly three-quarters of adults surveyed said they supported restrictions on alcohol advertising.
Two months ago, NBC ended a decades-old voluntary abstinence when it became the first major network to broadcast a hard liquor advertisement on national television.
Lawmakers blasted NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., saying it was putting profits before prudence.
The Columbia center's director of policy research, Susan Foster, said the group would be recommending an end to all television ads for alcohol, which would include beer as well as spirits. But she acknowledged NBC's decision complicated the situation.
"It's certainly going to be an uphill battle. But what we hope to do is break open a national dialogue," Foster said in a telephone interview.
The center also wants the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy to broaden its focus and include alcohol
gjames21S ...@lycos.com (Gary James)
Teen drinking can be curtailed very easily. All they have to do is enforce the laws. I was 21 before I ever drank any alcohol. This was for several reasons. One was my parents drank only on social occasions and never kept it in the house. Most of my friends were the same way.
But in the 1950s and 60s every place in Georgia where alcohol was sold had to display a sign about 18" wide and 30" high. It was yellow with black block letters that read: "Anyone providing alcohol to a minor shall be subject to a $10,000 fine and/or ten years in prison".
And they damn well meant it. The police would regularly send a minor to buy from the liquor stores. And some fool would sell to them.
I don't think they jailed the owner for over a day but they did get the fine and closed him down for a few months. This had a very sobering effect on liquor sales to minors. It was a rite of p***age in those days that on your 21st birthday you would ride into Atlanta and buy your first pint of whiskey. I had two very close friends in those days. One was a few months older than I and one a few months younger. As soon as the older one turned 21 I tried to get him to buy me a bottle. He told me to go to hell for he was not going to jail for my drinking. Later when I turned 21, the younger friend tried to get me to buy him some and I turned him down.
That is just the way it was when you knew the law meant what it said.
??????
~
melvinfuller ...@aol.com (MelvinFullerton)
Better yet kill the teens .
The lonely Island melvin WW2
"Earl Evleth" devl...@noos.fr
First, obviously even Bush`s daughters don`t believe the law!
Secondly, practices are different in different parts of the country, the strongly the Southern Baptist element the more "enforced" the laws.
And the law! Laws are the last refuge of a society. They are not needed if the societal instruction is well entrenched in the minds of the people.
Respect for the law is another matter, and the South traditionally has a crime index problem that won`t go away.
A friend of mind, who tried to get me to apply for a position in a well known North Florida university, bragging to me of the practices in the various counties of the region (he as a good old boy from the south).
Prohibition of sorts was practiced throughout the region but bootlegging was also well practiced. The running of booze back and forth across various county lines waa controlled by the local sheriffs! In between their running the speed traps!
Anyway, I decided to stay in California before coming to France (no speed traps, no moonshine).
And bootlegging itself was a "southern" tradition. So right in the middle of your Southern Baptist talk about law and order I detect something not quite right.
So back to your white lightning, y'all.
Earl
bogey bogey...@rr.com
Or Clinton's or Gore's for that matter. How soon we forget....
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2001/4/27/193 935 With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff Friday, April 27, 2001 8:39 p.m. EDT Jenna Nabbed for Alcohol Possession, Chelsea Gets P*** First daughter Jenna Bush was stopped by police in Austin, Texas, early Friday morning and given a citation for illegally possessing alcohol. At 19, Bush is two years shy of the legal drinking age in Texas.
Bush was ticketed at 1:30 a.m. by police patrolling Austin's East Sixth Street, a popular destination for the city's nightclub crowd.
Bush, a freshman at the University of Texas, was not arrested.
A spokeswoman for First Lady Laura Bush answered press inquiries about the incident by saying, "We respect the privacy of this young woman and we're not going to comment on her personal life." Former first lady Hillary Clinton has yet to comment on a report about her own daughter, Chelsea, who allegedly went on a wild spring break drinking binge in Aspen, Colo., last month.
According to Globe magazine, Secret Service agents had to intercede before the former first daughter became "sloppy drunk." Though Miss Clinton, who turned 21 earlier this year, reportedly barhopped from one Aspen saloon to another in a visibly inebriated state, she was not cited by police for public intoxication.
The mainstream press did not report the Clinton drinking incident.
Like Chelsea, former vice president Al Gore's daughters had their difficulties with alcohol.
Gore's daughter Karenna, who is now one of her father's closest political advisers, went though her own "wild child" phase, with former high school cl***mates recently telling Star magazine that "she loved pot and booze bashes." Karenna pal Anne Garofalo told Star that "Karenna was the first person you'd go to if you needed a partner in crime." And in 1996 Gore's then-16-year-old daughter Sarah was cited for underage possession of alcohol, in an episode similar to Jenna Bush's encounter with police Friday morning.
That same year the Gores' then-14-year-old son Albert III was suspended from tony St. Albans prep school for smoking marijuana at a school dance.
The press hushed up the younger Gore's drug bust after his father personally contacted news editors and asked them to kill the story.
gjames21S ...@lycos.com (Gary James)
It has been said that when citizens fear criminals more than criminals fear society, citizens will always suffer. That is what is happening now.
I have not seen this myself. The whole country is in a permissive mode and has been since the 1960s. The Courts have been writing laws that benefit the criminals since the 1950s. Our police cannot enforce that which does not exist.
But when an adult furnishes a child with alcohol, drugs or pornography, then a cop can always get his mind back right after 20 minutes with a rubber hose. Which I believe did far more good than harm. Larger than the large cities ? And please recall that the Southern states have a large black population. I see that Florida's gain was California's loss ;> I wish you would have listed some of these. I'm not sure I understand. Prohibition was practiced in that some counties were "wet" while others were "dry". I guess this still exists today. Some states like NC and VA have ABC (?) which is Alcohol Beverage Control which places the state in the position of retailing liquor. A practice I have never understood. It is under this system that bootlegging flourishes much like in the North during Prohibition. Much the way Mafia activities are controlled by police in the large cities.
Yes. I am familiar with this. When living in NC I was 20 miles from the nearest ABC and could not buy beer or whskey. Our friendly local bootlegger had a house in the middle of town. Across the street from the sheriff's office. He kept one bedroom stocked with beer and another with bonded whiskey. He made about $2 a bottle on whiskey and $1 a sixpack on beer. I would not doubt that he split this with the sheriff. Later that year the NCBI busted him for buying his liquor in TN and put him out of business. Until the sheriff could find this little old lady who ran the show after that. They didn't mind him bootlegging but they were offended that he spent his money at a TN wholesaler instead of the NC ABC store. Those are almost a thing of the past. The were fairly big in the counties that were in the path of North to Florida routes. A couple on the Georgia Atlantic coast were very profitable. But the Interstate helped to do them in.
Local shrifffs have always been a large part of many rural counties in the South. In some, they are "the Man". In others they are a flunky for "the Man". I will admit that there are two counties in GA that I would hate to be stopped in. If you have no local friends you might be there for awhile. A fellow once told me that the only thing in southern California was fruit pickers, pick nickers and dick lickers. Do you have a basket under your arm ?
When in high school I had a freind who had family in the North GA mountains and they did a little moonshining. Mostly for friends and relatives. I saw the still once, it was a very small thing. Not so. It is Northern tradition. Please recall that ol' Joe Kennedy was a great success in this tradition. Moonshining was an Apallachian tradition (North and South, please recall Shea's Rebellion.) with a few adherents in the swamps of GA and FL. But that is different from bootlegging. Earl, my good man. I probably have no more religion than you or my neighbor's dog. Which makes me sad to admit. For I do love the old traditions and that was a very important one. I do admire and respect the few people I know who still live a good Christian life. I admit they, as a group, are one of my few superiors. I doubt there has been any moonshine sold since the early 1960s.
There is no profit in it and it is too easy to find a still in these days of planes and helicopters. And drugs have taken over as the mind altering chemical of choice. I'm one of the few people I know who still prefers to get drunk the way God intended. Bourbon !
20 degrees last night ! It is a cold day in Georgia.
??????
~
clscott ...@aol.com (CLScott101)
We have a case coming to trial here where a 20-year-old woman was driving a car full of friends crashed and killed one. She was twice over the legal alcohol limit. The police are going after the businesses that sold her the liquor as well as charging her.
As has been noted, we need enforcement of existing laws. 87% of adults had their first drink before age 21.31% of high school students indulge in binge drinking at least once a month. This is not good news.
-Connie
john3 ...@aol.com (John361x)
This turns out to be a complete error. They didn't use proper statistical analysis. A better figure might be about 11%. And the one in 3 teens said to binge-drink at least --what was it? Once a month or more?--turns out to be another figure out of the blue. See today's NYTimes expose. Califano has retracted the report.
John
Gary James gjame...@SPAMlycos.com
There was one county near the coast (Glynn, Brunswick) that was a speed trap for as long as I can recall. Back in 1967, when Lester Maddox was governor, the sheriff had supported Jimmy Carter. Lester had billboards erected on all highways going into Glynn with a warning that it was a speed trap. I didn't realize it still was. A lot of those old sheriffs p*** the job on to their sons like a fuedal lord.
wstew ...@hawaii.rr.com (Ward Stewart)
Pleased to hear it -- that piece had the smell of utter buncombe to me. Fit, perhaps, for supermarket tabloids but not for the information of adults.
ward
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"We must be getting back to Alice. If I am away from her long, I get low in my mind." Gertrude Stein
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john3 ...@aol.com (John361x)
Which is not to say there is no teen drinking problem, but it's not so clear if it is worse than in, say, the '30s. Also--the shaky study surveyed people 12 to 20; I'd say there is a big difference between 12 year olds and 18-20 yr olds, drinking or whatever.
John
Rumpelstiltskin PleaseDonotReplyByEm...@nowhere.com
The only time I ever got falling-down drunk was when I was 15 or 16.
benf2 ...@yahoo.com (Ben Ferguson)
Ok. Good for you.
That's immoral because it uses deception.
<snip> Some friend. No true friend would curse you out that way.
Later when I turned Ah yes. Follow blindly.
clscott ...@aol.com (CLScott101)
No, as a matter of fact I didn't drink at all until after I had my children (no relationship here) and was in my thirties. I grew up in a family where there was little or no drinking.
-Connie
"Earl Evleth" devl...@noos.fr
Donna and I were married when she was still under 21. At the time I could not buy her a drink in a restaurant, I think the system believed I had evil intent!
Prior to that, however, she was one of the participants in Caltech "crew races". This consisted of two teams, 10 participants each, one standing behind the other each holding a cl*** of beer. The first person would start drinking, and when finished, the next person on the line would start drinking. The team which one was the team in which the 10 fastest drinkers were. Donna happened to be a faster beer drinking than I was, although definitely under age. So the other guys substituted here for my place in the crew races.
I don`t remember people getting drunk in this kind of contesting, so it was not binge. But the young men, by themselves, did drink to much at times. This extended into the 20s. Since I was gong to grad school I had access to 180 proof alcohol, and I used to illegally bring it to parties, it could be used like vodka to make up a punch (it had a real punch if one did not dilute it enough). Although this was illegal (Federal law too) our parties used to be with friends in the Pasadena (California) police force. They knew it was illegal but got drunk anyway. By the time all of us were over 20 we calmed down, became sober good citizens. Pasadena was known for its straight laceness in the 1950s, what was not known was that its Police force had an excellent collection of porno films from the 1950s, all taken from those duly arrested and prosecuted. Hypocrisy was next to Godliness in Pasadena.
One reason we quite drinking was the hangovers.
Who was it that was bragging about his law and order behavior down South? I don`t believe it.
Now is anybody ready for the lyrics of the dirty songs we sang in those days?
Earl
"Earl Evleth" devl...@noos.fr
Not excessivly, it gets watered down. This is a sin to sworn wine drinkers, but I have seen average people put ice cubes in their wine in the summer!
Once, driving across the USA, we stopped in Indiana and the restaurant had wine, so I ordered a bottom of ros?©, which came warm. So then I ordered some ice cubes and the waitress thought I was nuts when I put them in the gl*** and poured our wine into it. One can do anything with cheap wine.
Coca cola is so frequently drank now in French restaurants one sees even adults drinking it (not in a top place but a good place). Wine consumption is down at meals, and at the lab nobody every drank wine at lunch.
It interfers with any intellectual activity. If one shares a bottle of wine at lunch, forget abut the afternoon.
And it is against the law to give children wine or beer in a public place in France. I have not seen it done in years and can`t remember very far back (25 years).
At home, it might occur on a festive occasion but not every night.
So it it theoretically possible that a teenager might be given a cl*** of champagne at a dinner celebrating some family event at a restaurant. Personally, I have never "felt" champagne.
If it is an instrument of seduction, it is not the alcohol which does it. It is just part of the "mise en scene". Candle lights, music, flowers on the table, a little present for the lady, and champagne on the balcony of a nice hotel overlook a moon lit ocean at night. Slow and easy, don`t rush.
Earl
bogey bogey...@rr.com
I had no idea that you two used to be normal people. What on earth trajic event led to your reversal ?
"Donna Evleth" devl...@noos.fr
People like you, Bogey.
Donna Evleth
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