See also: Cost of Impaired Driving in Iowa
See also: Behind Bars I and II

Califano, Joseph A., Jr.; "Teen tipplers: America's underage drinking epidemic," National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University (February 26, 2002). "Children under the age of 21 drink 25 percent of the alcohol consumed in the U. S. Drinking beer is teen America's fatal attraction. Underage drinkers are a critical segment of the alcohol beverage market. Individuals who do not drink before age 21 are virtually certain never to do do: 82.8 percent of adults who drink had their first drink of alcohol before age 21. In 1998, they accounted for $27 billion of the $108 billion spent on alcohol, including as much as $15 billion on beer. Without underage drinkers, the alcohol industry, and the beer industry in particular, would suffer severe economic declines and dramatic loss of profits."

Cook, Philip J.; Moore, Michael J.; "The economics of alcohol abuse and alcohol control-policies," HEALTH AFFAIRS (Mar/Apr 2002), 21 (2):120-133. "Economic research as contributed to the evaluation of alcohol policy through empirical analysis of the effects of alcohol -control measures on alcohol consumption and its consequences. It has also provided an accounting framework for defining and comparing costs and benefits of alcohol consumption and related policy interventions, including excise taxes. The most important finding form the economics literature is that consumers tend to drink less ethanol, an have fewer alcohol-related problems, when alcoholic beverage prices are increased or alcohol availability is restricted. That set of findings is relevant for policy purposes because alcohol abuse imposes large 'external' costs on others. Important challenges remain, including developing a better understanding of the effects of drinking on labor-market productivity."

"Drinking and related problems decline when alcohol costs more", STATUS REPORT , 45 (6), June 19, 2010. (Review of 72 studies world wide.)The Task Force on Community Preventive Services, made up of US public health and prevention experts appointed by the Centers for Disease Control, conducted the review of papers published before July 2005 with support from the Centers for Disease Control and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. The task force recommends the best practices for public health interventions.

Nearly all of the 72 students found an inverse relationship between tax or price of alcohol and indices of excessive drinking or alcohol-related problems, including crashes. Results were consistent among alcohol types--wine, beer, and liquor--and across countries, time periods, and study designs. Studies that looked at underage drinkers also found convincing evidence that increasing the cost of alcohol reduces consumption and problem drinking. More research is needed to determine the benefits of increasing taxes on all alcohol at once compared with selectively raising taxes on specific beverages, the task force states.

Prior studies by the group found strong evidence that ignition interlocks, sobriety checkpoints, and the legal drinking age of 21 are effective interventions to combat alcohol-impaired driving.

"The effectiveness of tax policy interventions for reducing recessive alcohol consumption and related harms: by R. E. Elder et al., appears in the February 2010 issue of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF
PREVENTIVE MEDICINE.
http://www.iihs.org/sr/default.html

"Economic perspectives in alcoholism research," ALCOHOL ALERT (January, 2001), 51. (Economic analysis is used to estimate the costs of alcohol abuse and alcoholism. Based on 1992 data, researchers estimate 45 % of costs was borne by alcohol abusers and their families, 20% by the Federal Government, 18% by State and local government, 10 % by private insurance companies, and 6% by the victims of alcohol-related crashes. Higher taxes on alcoholic beverages have been linked to lower traffic fatality rates.) Address: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa51.htm

Hingson, R,; Heereen, T.; Zakocs, R.; "Age of drinking onset and involvement in physical fights after drinking." PEDIATRICS (2001), 108 (4): 872-877p. ("Persons who began drinking before age 14 were at least 3 times more likely than those who did not drink until they were over 21 to experience diagnosable alcohol dependence during their life and people who started drinking at an earlier age drink heavily with greater frequency during both adolescence and adulthood. Each year, of 11.1 million victims of violent assaults in the United States, 24% believed the perpetrator had been drinking. Roizen has estimated 37% of assault offenders, 60% of sexual offenders, 57% of men and 27% of women involved in marital violence, and 13% of child abusers had been drinking at the time of the event. Penanen reported 42% of violent crimes reported to the police involved alcohol. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 40% of persons convicted of homicide and 24% of victims had been drinking at the time of the event."

Hingson, R.; Heeren, T.; Jamanka, A; Howland, J.; "Age of drinking onset and unintentional injury involvement after drinking," JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, (2000), 284 (27): 1527-1533. Drinking onset at ages younger than 21 years is associated with having experienced alcohol-related injuries. One third of of deaths due to unintentional injury in the United States are estimated to be alcohol related. Strategies to delay the age persons begin drinking, such as the minimum legal drinking age of 21 years, have been found to reduce drinking, alcohol-related traffic deaths, and deaths from other unintentional injuries among persons younger than 21 years.

Miller, T. R.; Lestina, D. C.; Spicer, R. S.; "Highway crash costs in the United States by driver age, blood alcohol level, victim age, and restraint use," ACCIDENT ANALYSIS AND PREVENTION (1998), 30 (2): 137-150. (Notable findings are: (1) crash costs of novice drivers are high enough to yield preliminary benefit-cost ratios around 4-8 for a provisional licensing system that restricts driving after midnight and 11 for zero alcohol tolerance for young divers with violators receiving a 6-month suspension; (2) the cost to people other than the intoxicated driver per mile driven at BACs of 0.08-0.099% exceed the value of driver mobility; (3) the safety costs of drunk driving appear to exceed $5.80 per mile, compared with $2.50 per mile driven at BACs of 0.08-0.099%, and $0.11 per mile driven sober; (4) highway crashes cause an estimated 3.2% of U. S. medical spending, including more than 14% of medical spending for ages 15-24; (5) ignoring crash-involved occupants whose restraint use is unknown, the 13% of occupants who police reported were traveling unrestrained accounted for an estimated 42% of the crash costs; and (6) if these unrestrained occupants buckled up, the medical costs of crashes would decline by an estimated 18% [almost $4 billion annually] and comprehensive costs by 24%.)

Miller, Ted R.; Levy, David T.; Spicer, Rebecca S.; Taylor, Dexter M.; "Societal costs of underage drinking", JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL (2002), 67: 519-528. Underage drinking accounted for at least 16% of alcohol sales in 2001. It led to 3,170 deaths and 2.6 million other harmful events. The estimated $62.9 billion bill (relative SE+ 18.5%) included $5.4 billion in medical costs, $14.9 billion in work loss and other resource costs, and $41.6 billion in lost quality of life, which accounted for 67% of total costs, required challenging indirect measurement. Alcohol-attributable violence and traffic crashes dominated the costs. Leaving aside quality of life, the societal harm of $1 per drink consumed by an underage drinker exceeded the average purchase price of $0.90 or the associated $0.10 in tax revenues. Youth drinking behaviors merit the same kind of serious attention as alcohol and illicit drugs.

Muthen, Bengt O.; Muthen, Linda K.; " The development of heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems from ages 18 to 37 in a U. S. national sample," JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL (2000), 81 (2): 290-300. " N=7859 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Results: A key finding is that dropping out of high school has no effect on alcohol-related problems for individuals in the mid-twenties, but is associated with significantly increased levels of alcohol-related problems for individuals in their mid thirties, in contrast, going on to college is associated with lower levels of heavy drinking when individuals reach their late twenties and their thirties. Strong gender and ethnicity effects seen in the twenties diminish when individuals reach their thirties. Conclusions: The trajectory analysis expands the knowledge of problematic alcohol development for individuals in their late twenties and thirties. The increasing detrimental effect of dropping out of high school up to the age 37 endpoint of the study raises questions about the effects in later life of dropping out of high school."

"Shoveling up II: The Impact of Substance Abuse on Federal, State and Local Budgets". National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (New York, New York). May 2009.

Key 2005 findings of the report are:
For every dollar federal and state governments spent to prevent and treat substance abuse and addictions, they spend $59.83 in public programs shoveling up its wreckage.

If substance abuse and addiction were its own state budge category, it would rank second just behind spending on elementary and secondary education.

If substance abuse and addiction were its own budget category at the federal level, it would rank sixth behind social security, national defense, income security, Medicare and other health programs including the federal share of Medicaid.

Federal and state governments spend more that 60 times as much to clean up the devastation substance abuse and addiction visits on children as they do on prevention and treatment for them--notes from Joseph A. Califano. Check out the entire article at: http://www.casacolumbia.org/templates/PressReleases.aspx?articleid=556&zoneid=66

updated 09/06/10