Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking

In March 2007, the U.S. surgeon general released The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking 2007. This science-based report, developed in collaboration with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is a call to all Americans to help tackle the issue of underage drinking.

Call to Action is organized into four sections that provide a public health approach to prevent and reduce underage drinking:

• Section 1 provides an overview of the scope of the underage drinking problem in the United States.
• Section 2 describes alcohol use and its relationship to and impact on adolescent development.
• Section 3 describes a framework for preventing and reducing alcohol use and alcohol disorders in adolescents.
• Section 4 delineates strategies for improved interaction, communication, and cooperation to prevent and reduce underage drinking.

Goals of the Call to Action

In addition to presenting the latest research on the scope of the problem, the report challenges every member of society to recognize the severity of the underage drinking problem in the United States and provides detailed action steps at the community, state, and national levels to achieve the goals of this call to action.

The report identifies six nationwide goals both to reduce the number of underage drinkers and to prevent children and adolescents from beginning to drink:

• Goal 1: Foster changes in American society that facilitate healthy adolescent development and that help prevent and reduce underage drinking.
• Goal 2: Engage parents, schools, communities, all levels of government, all social systems that interact with youth, and youth themselves, in a coordinated national effort to prevent and reduce drinking and its consequences.
• Goal 3: Promote an understanding of underage alcohol consumption in the context of human development and maturation that takes into account individual adolescent characteristics as well as environmental, ethnic, cultural, and gender differences.
• Goal 4: Conduct additional research on adolescent alcohol use and its relationship to development.
• Goal 5: Work to improve public health surveillance on underage drinking and on population-based risk factors for this behavior.
• Goal 6: Work to ensure that policies at all levels are consistent with the national goal of preventing and reducing underage alcohol consumption.

Key Findings from the Report

The report details the most recent statistics on underage drinking. The key findings include the following:

• Alcohol is the drug of choice among American adolescents, used by more young people than tobacco or illicit drugs. Although there has been a significant decline in tobacco and illicit drug use among teens, underage drinking has remained at consistently high levels.
• Young people who start drinking before the age of 15 are five times more likely to have alcohol problems later in life than those who begin drinking at age 21 or older.
• New research indicates that alcohol may harm the developing adolescent brain.
• There are approximately 11 million underage drinkers in the United States. Nearly 7.2 million (18.8 percent) are considered binge drinkers and more than 2 million (6 percent) are classified as heavy drinkers. By age 18, more than 70 percent of teens have had a drink.
• As they get older, the chance that young people will use alcohol grows. Over 11 percent of 12-year-old children (6th graders) say that they have used alcohol at least once. By age 13, that number doubles. By age 14 (8th grade), 41 percent of children have had at least one drink, and nearly 20 percent say they have been drunk at least once.

College Drinking

Call to Action provides specific information and statistics regarding college students’ drinking practices. Likewise, the report details prevention strategies for campus administrators. Call to Action provides action steps for changing college and university campus cultures that contribute to alcohol use that are consistent with the Higher Education Center’s comprehensive environmental approach to alcohol abuse prevention. The strategies recommended by the report are as follows:

• Establish, review, and enforce rules against underage alcohol use with consequences that are developmentally appropriate and sufficient to ensure compliance.
• Eliminate alcohol sponsorship of athletic events and other campus social activities.
• Restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages on campus or at campus facilities, such as football stadiums and concert halls.
• Implement responsible beverage service policies at campus facilities, such as sports arenas, concert halls, and campus pubs.
• Hold all student groups on campus, including fraternities, sororities, athletics teams, and student clubs and organizations, strictly accountable for underage alcohol use at their facilities and during functions that they sponsor.
• Eliminate alcohol advertising in college publications.
• Educate parents, instructors, and administrators about the consequences of underage drinking on college campuses, including secondhand effects that range from interference with studying to being the victim of an alcohol-related assault or date rape, and enlist their assistance in changing any culture that currently supports alcohol use by underage students.
• Partner with community stakeholders to address underage drinking as a community problem as well as a college problem and to forge collaborative efforts that can achieve a solution.
• Expand opportunities for students to make spontaneous social choices that do not include alcohol (e.g., by providing frequent alcohol-free late night events, extending the hours of student centers and athletics facilities, and increasing public service opportunities).

These strategies are part of a comprehensive approach to prevention and help campuses examine and address the ways in which they may be supporting or contributing to underage alcohol use.

Additional Resources

In addition to Call to Action, the surgeon general’s office provides supporting guides, fact sheets, and media resources for the report. These resources are available at the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking Web site.