When eight Luxemburg-Casco High School students were found to be in violation of the Wisconsin school's code of conduct and disciplined after Feb. 2010 photos showing them drinking alcohol were posted on Facebook, it raised controversy in their community. But they were not the first to face academic, and possibly legal consequences from their actions.
Communities around the country are grappling with underage drinking. For example: More than 100 Eden Prairie, Mo., high school students were reprimanded by school administrators, including some suspensions, in Jan. 2008, after Facebook photos showed them drinking. Several Glen Ridge, N.J. students faced suspension by school officials in 2007 because Facebook pictures showed them drinking alcohol at a off-campus party, and photos posted in Dec. 2009 on Facebook landed the Lexington, Mo. Police Chief in the unemployment line because they showed him at a party with underage drinkers.
Teen drinking has long been considered a rite of passage. Most teens drink because they want to experiment with alcohol, some drink for the thrill of it, and others say it helps them relax. Still, for others, its for all those reasons, plus they also want to get away from problems and to deal with anger or frustration issues, according to the Monitoring the Future Study, an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American teens, college students and young adults the conducted by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
Monitoring the Future found three out of every four teens have consumed alcohol (defined as "more than a few sips") by the end of high school; 41 percent of students have met that criterion by the eight grade.
Teen drinking is often looked at as a benign activity that is a natural part of maturation. Still, underage drinking has serious health and social consequences. Aside from being illegal, research shows that drinking patterns established during adolescence are likely to continue through adulthood.
A 2005 U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services report cited of 10.8 million underaged drinkers, ages 12 to 20, 28.2 percent said they had consumed alcohol in the past month. Nearly 7.2 million of those –18.8 percent – were binge drinkers, and 2.3 million –or six percent – were identified as heavy drinkers.
The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health, calls underaged drinking “a major public health challenge.” Besides alcohol-related traffic crashes, the leading cause of death of American 15-to-20-year-olds, teens are also extremely vulnerable to alcohol-induced brain damage that leads to mild cognitive impairment and can also escalate their future consumption habits.
Teen drinking contributes to poor academic performance, heightens incidences of depression and stress, which can lead to suicide, and increases the likelihood of sexual assault and high-risk sex. Additionally, teen drinkers are also more likely to suffer weight and health problems later in life than their non-drinking peers.
Now teen girls can add one more health disadvantage to the list: benign breast disease. Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Harvard University found the risk of benign breast disease increased with the amount of alcohol consumed in the adolescent and early adult years. Benign breast disease increases the risk for developing breast cancer.
Researchers followed 6,899 girls, ages 9-15, from all 50 states as part of the Growing Up Today study, published in the May issue of Pediatrics and is available online.
“We know from many other studies of adult women that alcohol intake later in life increases breast cancer risk,” said Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, and associate director of prevention and control at Washington University School of Medicine Siteman Cancer Center and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. “Since many women begin drinking alcohol as adolescents right at the time in which breast tissue is going through stages of rapid proliferation, we wanted to see if the effect of alcohol on breast cancer risk was operative in this younger group.”
The study showed girls and young women who drank six or seven days a week were a whopping 5.5 times more likely to have benign breast disease than those who didn't drink or who had less than one drink per week. Participants who reported drinking three to five days per week had three times the risk.
Study participants who were diagnosed with benign breast disease on average drank more often, drank more on each occasion and had an average daily consumption that was two times that of those who did not have benign breast disease. They also had more episodes of binge drinking.
“There's growing evidence that physical activity can lower breast cancer risk, and we also know that diet and weight are important factors. Now it is clear that drinking habits throughout life affect breast cancer risk, as well,” Colditz said.
Lynette Summerill is an award-winning journalist who lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. In addition to writing about cancer-related issues, she writes a blog, Nonsmoking Nation, which follows global tobacco news and events.