Early Drinking and Adult Alcohol Dependence Increases Among Americans

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In the United States, alcohol is the primary substance of abuse among young people. It is a major contributor to the three leading causes of death among this population — unintentional injuries; homicide; and suicide.

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Studies

Important Alcohol-Related Research

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Report:
How far the Alcohol Industry will go to hide the truth about Underage drinking

For years, MADD and other health and safety groups have been working to get Congress to evaluate underage drinking prevention efforts. Finally, Congress allocated $500,000 to take a closer look.

Six years ago, Congress gave $1 billion to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) to develop an anti-drug media campaign to prevent youth use. Mysteriously, underage drinking prevention messages were excluded from the campaign.
An amendment to require the ONDCP to begin including such underage drinking prevention messages in the campaign was proposed. This proposal was criticized by the Drug Czar at the time, who was heading up the ONDCP campaign and the alcohol industry, whose forces on Capitol Hill were led by the National Beer Wholesalers Association (NBWA) and other alcohol industry moguls.
Due to the hefty political campaign donations made by the alcohol industry (in the ballpark of $4 million) this amendment proposal to include youth alcohol prevention in the billion dollar media campaign was defeated.
In response to this defeat, a few politicians introduced the National Media Campaign to Prevent Underage Drinking Act of 2000 which would authorize the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a separate national media campaign directed at preventing and reducing underage drinking.
Intimidated, the alcohol industry lobbied against the campaign, and convinced Congress to direct the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to evaluate every single underage drinking prevention effort made to date, including the alcohol industry's own prevention efforts.
On a $500,000 budget, the NAS reviewed science-based research and recommended proven underage drinking prevention strategies, such as creating more stringent alcohol advertising practices and increasing alcohol excise taxes - strategies the alcohol industry strongly opposes.
The NBWA realized that the release of this information to the public would create a negative backlash against the alcohol industry, and used intimidation tactics on the NAS to keep this information under wraps.
Due to the financial contributions made by the NWBA to politicians, the alcohol industry has a stronghold on political decisions. From providing members of Congress free or discounted alcohol for events, free beer and wine tastings on Capitol Hill, large contributions to campaign organizations, and direct contributions to politicians, the NWBA and related alcohol interest groups have contributed more than $61 million to federal candidates and political parties.

Excerpts taken from "Brewing Controversy," Driven, A MADD Publication, Fall 2003

NAS Findings

"The committee reached the fundamental conclusion that underage drinking cannot be successfully addressed by focusing on youth alone. Youth drink within the context of a society in which alcohol use is normative behavior and images about alcohol are pervasive. They usually obtain alcohol - either directly or indirectly - from adults. Efforts to reduce underage drinking, therefore, need to focus on adults and must engage the society at large."

Some articles in support of the NAS Report are listed below.

MADD Praises NAS Underage Drinking Report

Landmark Underage Drinking Report Hailed by Field, Denounced by Industry

NCADD New Jersey Supports Alcohol-Tax Increase Recommendation

The NAS Report outlines many recommendations on how to reduce underage drinking on all levels (parents and other adults, alcohol producers, wholesalers and retail outlets, restaurants and bars, entertainment media, schools, colleges and universities, community organizations and youth themselves). Many of these recommendations support the Youth In Action mission and its projects, such as increased compliance checks, media campaigns, policy change, and youth-led/youth implemented prevention work.

Brain Development Studies

Over the past few years there has been extensive research conducted on brain development. Until recently, it was thought that the brain was completely developed around the age of 18. However, recent studies show that the brain does not completely develop until the early 20s, and any use of alcohol prior to full development can cause significant and permanent damage to certain parts of the brain.

Dr. Scott Swartzwelder, a highly respected neuropsychologist at Duke University, has studied the brain development of adolescent rats, and has conducted many tests on them to distinguish the harms caused to the brain from alcohol consumption.

Teen drinkers appear to be most susceptible to damage in the hippocampus, a structure buried deep in the brain that is responsible for many types of learning and memory, and the prefrontal cortex, located behind the forehead, which is the brain's chief decision maker and voice of reason. Both areas, especially the prefrontal cortex, undergo dramatic change in the second decade of life.

Consuming alcohol before the brain is fully developed causes significant damage to the parts of the brain which help to create and retain memories. Dr. Swartzwelder found that alcohol blocks long-term memory making abilities, called potentiation, in adolescent brain tissue much more than in adult tissue. Next, Swartzwelder identified a likely explanation. Long-term potentiation- and thus memory formation- relies in large part on the action of a neurotransmitter known as glutamate, the brain's chemical king-pin of neural excitation. Glutamate strengthens a cell's electrical stimulation when it binds to a docking port called the NMDA receptor. If the receptor is blocked, so is long-term potentiation, and thus memory formation. Swartzwelder found that exposure to the equivalent of just two beers inhibits the NMDA receptors in the hippocampai cells of adolescent rats, while more than twice as much is required to produce the same effect in adult rats. These findings led him to suspect that alcohol consumption might have a dramatic impact on the ability of adolescents to learn.

Excerpts taken from "Getting Stupid" by Bernice Wuethrich in Discover magazine, Vol. 22, No. 03, March 2001.