Exceptional Students

Higher drinking age means less binge drinking, except for college students.

Raising the legal drinking age may help curb binge drinking, says research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study, which found that there has been a substantial reduction in binge drinking since the legal age was raised to 21 two decades ago, also revealed that college students have been the exception to this finding. Notably, while the number of male college students who binge drink has remained steady, the number of female college students who do so has risen. This also includes females of various racial and ethnic minority groups, in which the overall rate has declined.  

The study, led by Richard A. Grucza, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, involved data collected between 1979 and 2006 by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The information comes from more than 500,000 subjects; the researchers grouped them according to age, sex, ethnicity and student status. 

Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks at one event. In 2006, the last year for which the data was examined, reported that more than half of male collegians and almost 40 percent of female college students engage in binge drinking, signaling that the gender gap is closing.

Overall, however, there has been a decline in binge drinking since 1979, including among African American, Hispanic, and other minority males, but among females in these groups, binge drinking has increased.  

Why are college students particularly prone to engage in binge drinking, while the general population has seen a decrease in this behavior? Is it peer pressure? “I don’t know if I would call it ‘peer pressure,’ but cultural factors within the college subculture seem to take on a life of their own,” Grucza explains. “It is an environment where people don’t have to report to parents or a spouse, or get up early in the mooring, and they have a reasonable amount of money.”  

The main reason, he notes, may just be accessibility. “I do think the big thing is the fairly easy access to alcohol; they are living in close quarters with people who are of legal age.” 

There was increase in female binge drinking, but the data shows that the greatest rise has been among women who are over the age of 21. “For females under the age of  21, binge drinking showed a flat trend, but for those over 21 there was an increase among females,” Grucza tells demo dirt.  

"The idea that women are drinking more is not new. A lot of people have been studying the closing gender gap in substances use, and it may just be a function of changing gender rules in our roles in our society,” he adds. ”After World War II the number of women who drank increased. Women started drinking earlier after World War II and early drinking is a big predictor drinking as an adult."

This cultural change, Grucza adds, is on par with the increase in females who began smoking as they gained more independence. “Gender rules are changing. Alcohol marketing is marketed now much more to women,” he maintains. 

Not only are the types of alcohol being marketed to women changing (Skinnygirl Margarita, anyone?), the ads are appearing in many more places that reach women, such as fashion magazines.  “It is a chicken-or-egg question,” Grucza adds.  “Is marketing causing women to embrace drinking as socially acceptable, or is marketing targeting women because it is socially acceptable among women now?”  

While binge drinking has decreased among minority males, such as African American, Hispanic and other groups, it has risen among minority women. Grucza says that even with that change, binge drinking among this group is still relatively rare. “With minority women, there have been fairly substantial increases with binge drinking, especially among younger women, but the change has gone from very low rates to low rates,” he explains. “It was rare behavior among women in the 70s and 80s, and still quite low compared to white women.” 

The increase from “very low rate” to “low rates” may be due to acculturation. “The dominant group sets the rate of drinking for the rest of society,” Grucza explains. “For example, someone from a country where drinking is rare may not pick up drinking, but their children will. The native-born Hispanic rates of drinking may go up a bit, and if there is less segregation among blacks, it will go up a bit.” However, he adds, “traditionally drinking in African American culture has been lower in than in the white culture, it is more part of the European culture.”  

One reason for that, Grucza says, may be the strong religious influence in the community. “There is much more of an evangelical Christianity that is common among African Americans, and that could be part of it.” 

There may also be historical roots that explain why whites may be more likely to drink more alcohol. “Drinking comes from the European culture and there may be genetic reasons for that,” Grucza explains. “In the absence of sterile drinking water, in rural Europe in the Middle Ages, people drank alcohol to stay hydrated. There is the idea that people who couldn’t drink alcohol may have died from dehydration.” 

The main point of the study, beyond the generational, sex or racial differences, is that raising the drinking age does prevent alcohol-related crimes like driving under the influences, assault, homicide, and tragedies like suicide.  

“The point is that lowering the drinking age reduces binge drinking overall,” Grucza maintains.  And for those people who present the old “forbidden fruit” argument that lowering the legal age would prevent binge drinking among young people? Data shows otherwise.  

Foreign teenagers whose countries have no drinking age, Grucza says, do engage in binge drinking. People who make the argument that teenagers abroad don’t drink, he adds, simply do not have the data in front of them. “It may be due to anecdotal evidence,” he maintains. “They may be in the cities, or around an educated circle, or it is just their experience for whatever reason. It is not true that European teenagers don’t binge drink. They do.” 

It is a public health issue, he concludes. “When the drinking age was lower, DUI deaths were increasing rapidly because younger people were driving under the influence of alcohol,” Grucza says. “People who want to lower the drinking age usually have no data in front of them, and they forget why the drinking age was raised in the first place.”