Study: Alcohol alternatives supported

An American Medical Association survey released Wednesday shows binge drinking is among parents’ top concerns as university students head back to school.

Nearly 95 percent say excessive drinking is a serious threat to their children, and 85 percent say easy access to alcohol at colleges contributes to the problem.

Chancellor John Wiley and Madison Mayor Sue Bauman participated in a news conference Wednesday announcing the findings and detailing the campus-community partnership in Madison that goes beyond traditional prevention efforts that focus on the individual drinkers.

“Recent surveys of the drinking patterns of college students only reinforces the importance of changing the community norms that foster a culture of high-risk drinking on our campuses,” Wiley says. “Over the past two years the university has learned a great deal about the phenomenon of high-risk drinking. As a result, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison we are focusing primarily on changing the environment, not individuals, as a way of reducing this problem.”

Nationally, the number of students who frequently binge drink, meaning they binged three or more times in two weeks, is on the rise. Forty-four percent of college students binge, and nearly one in four do so frequently, placing themselves and others at risk for numerous alcohol-related harms, including sexual assault and other violence, traumatic injury, and death by alcohol overdose.

Those polled by the AMA support a broad range of public policy solutions:

• 92 percent support enhanced enforcement of laws prohibiting alcohol sales to underage persons
• 80 percent favor restricting access to college bars to patrons aged 21 and older
• 89 percent support increased penalties on retail establishments that serve underage or intoxicated customers, and 81 percent favor increased liability for such retailers
• 78 percent support limiting the number and location of bars close to college campuses
• 77 percent favor banning alcohol advertising in college sports, and 73 percent would bar drink special advertisements from college newspapers.

A Matter of Degree: The National Effort to Reduce High-Risk Drinking Among College Students is administered by the AMA Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse, and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The 10 campus-community partnerships of AMOD go beyond traditional prevention efforts that focus on the individual drinker, recognizing that the social environment also influences individual decision making.

These “town-gown” collaborations – among college administrators, elected officials, students, parents, law enforcement, concerned bar owners and others – work together to address alcohol advertising and marketing, institutional policies and practices, local ordinances, and cultural beliefs and behaviors, factors that converge to encourage high-risk drinking.

The study of 801 U.S. residents, 21 years of age and older, was conducted by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates of Washington, D.C. The margin of error is +/- 3.5 percent .