A Harvard University study has confirmed a fact of college life: The availability of cheap beer and other alcoholic beverages near college campuses raises the likelihood of binge drinking.
“The drinking lifestyle is a well-advertised and low-budget form of entertainment on college campuses,” said Henry Wechsler, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, which released the study yesterday .
“Our study confirms that the lower the prices and the more extensive the specials, the more heavy the drinking,” he said. Those who want to stop alcohol abuse on college campuses “have an uphill battle,” he said, urging more regulation of alcohol-marketing practices around colleges.
The Harvard study is the third one on underage drinking this week.
On Tuesday, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine said that underage drinking — with its related traffic accidents, health problems and crimes — costs the nation about $53 billion a year. The report called for higher taxes on alcoholic beverages, tougher state drinking laws and less advertising to young audiences.
The same day, the Federal Trade Commission said it had reviewed advertising for flavored malt beverages and found that the alcoholic beverage industry had complied “more than 99 percent” with its standard of advertising only in media in which half the audience is adult.
“Moreover,” the FTC said, “in response to concerns raised about teen exposure to alcohol ads, the industry now has committed to adhere to a 70 percent [adult audience] placement standard.”
The Institute of Medicine study acknowledges the role of parents in fighting underage drinking, “which we’ve been talking about for some time,” said Ralph Blackman, spokesman for the Century Council, a group that responds to social-responsibility issues involving distilled spirits.
“We know that parents are the largest influences on kids’ decisions not to drink,” he said, adding that this year, the council released “Alcohol 101,” an interactive CD program designed to prevent alcohol abuse on college campuses.
The Harvard study relies on data from 10,823 students at 118 four-year colleges who were part of its 2001 College Alcohol Study.
Students were asked about their alcohol use and driving practices. These data were analyzed with information about alcohol promotions and marketing collected from more than 2,500 bars, restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and liquor stores near the campuses.
The study found that binge-drinking rates rose if the neighborhood was “wet” — if bars had weekend drinking specials and liquor outlets offered price discounts on cases or kegs of beer. Binge drinking was defined as five or more drinks in a row for men and four drinks in a row for women in the past two weeks.
The Harvard study, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, appears in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
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