THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Hard liquor is the drink of choice among the 40 percent of teenagers who try alcohol, a new government study shows.
Bourbon, rum, scotch, vodka and whiskey were consumed more than beer by high school students who drank, according to a report in this week's issue of
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (
MMWR), a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the most part, the finding held true for both genders and across all racial groups.
"The rate of teen drinking is pretty dang high," said Dr. James Garbutt, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It is intriguing that hard liquor is the preferred beverage. I wouldn't intuitively have thought that."
In the
MMWR report, CDC researchers culled data from a youth risk behavior survey conducted in 2005 that focused on four states: Arkansas, New Mexico, Nebraska and Wyoming. The number of teens surveyed ranged from 1,615 in Arkansas to 5,634 in New Mexico. The prevalence of drinking ranged from 42.3 percent in New Mexico to 45.4 percent in Wyoming.
In all the states in the survey, liquor was the most popular drink, ranging from 34.1 percent in Nebraska to 44.7 percent in Arkansas. This was followed by beer or malt liquor. Wine was the least popular drink, ranging from 1.6 percent in Arkansas and Wyoming to 3.1 percent in New Mexico.
With the exception of Nebraska, liquor was the most popular type of alcohol consumed by boys, followed by beer. Beer was the most popular drink among boys in Nebraska, followed by liquor, the researchers found.
Among girls, liquor was the most popular drink in all four states, followed by malt beverages and beer.
As for binge drinking, the prevalence ranged from 28.6 percent in New Mexico to 32 percent of teens in Wyoming. Liquor was the most popular drink for binge drinking in all four states and among both boys and girls, except in Nebraska, where beer was preferred by boys.
"These data also underscore the need to continue the use of evidence-based strategies to reduce youth drinking," the
MMWR editors wrote. "Previous studies have indicated that certain strategies are effective, including improved enforcement of minimum legal purchasing-age laws [e.g., through compliance checks in which minors or youthful-looking adults attempt to purchase alcohol from retail establishments] and increased alcohol excise taxes," they added.
The researchers suggested several reasons why hard liquor might be preferable to beer among teens, reasons that included the fact that it's easier to hide alcohol consumption by pouring it into a soft drink, and that the taste might be more palatable to beginning drinkers.
Another reason might be that the alcohol level is higher in liquor, so binge drinkers feel the effect of the alcohol faster, Garbutt said.
Garbutt thinks that the report confirms that "alcohol is one of our most misused and abused drugs."
Parents should educate their children about alcohol, Garbutt stressed. "Parents need to be aware of children's access to liquor in the home. Whether they want to keep it locked up or whether they want to monitor it, they need to educate their children about drinking," he said.
Linear Mode
