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Alcohol-related problems decline among college students

Alcohol-impaired driving, alcohol-related mortality and binge drinking among 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college is starting to go down after years of going up, according to findings recently published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

However, the researchers also found these incident rates are increasing among young adults who are not in college.

“…From 1998 to 2005 … the percentage of 18- to 24-year-old college students reporting driving under alcohol’s influence increased from 26.5% to 28%, and the proportion reporting consumption of five or more drinks on an occasion in the past month increased from 41.7% to 44.7%,” Ralph Hingson, ScD, MPH, of the division of epidemiology and prevention research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and colleagues wrote. “Because many more 18- to 24-year-olds were not in college, the total number of alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths for the entire 18-24 age group was 5,534. This underscores the need to examine trends in the magnitude of alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths among all 18- to 24-year-olds, not just college students.”

Hingson and colleagues analyzed the National Survey on Drug Use and Health; national injury mortality data from census, college enrollment and coroner statistics; and the Nationwide Inpatient Sample from almost 20 years to get the data.

Researchers found that alcohol-connected overdose fatalities among young adults who were 18 to 24 years of age, increased from 207 in 1998 to 891 in 2014, a 254% increase per 100,000; alcohol-overdose hospitalizations rose 26% per 100,000 during this period, particularly from alcohol/opioid overdoses, which were up 197% and alcohol/other drug overdoses, which were up 61%. Other types of nontraffic unintentional injury deaths declined.

Hingson and colleagues also found that the occurrence from 1999 to 2005 among 18- to 24-year-olds reporting past-month heavy episodic drinking rose from 37.1% to 43.1% and then declined to 38.8% in 2014. Alcohol-related unintentional injury deaths increased from 4,807 in 1998 to 5,531 in 2005 and then declined to 4,105 in 2014, a reduction of 29% per 100,000 from 1998. Alcohol-connected traffic fatalities went from 3,783 in 1998 to 4,114 in 2005 and then declined to 2,614 in 2014, down 43% per 100,000 since 1998.

According to the researchers, factors playing a role in the lower numbers include the economic recession of 2008, that every state having a legal blood alcohol concentration level of 0.08 and that college administrators stepping up efforts to reduce problematic drinking.

“[The] expansion of the literature may have prompted more colleges to adopt a wider array of interventions,” Hingson said in a press release. “[Conversely,] among young adults who aren't in college, there aren't the same organizational supports to implement interventions, and that may be contributing to why binge drinking is increasing in that group.”

Researchers suggested that expanding one-on-one oriented interventions, creating collaborations between communities and colleges, and finding evidence-supported policies to lower emerging adults’ drinking and related problems be expanded to continue lowering drinking levels and related problems among both college-age persons and college students. – by Janel Miller

Disclosure: Healio Family Medicine was unable to determine researchers’ relevant disclosures prior to publication.