What Kids Drink: Teens' Alcohol Preferences
Nearly half of underage drinkers prefer liquor to beer and are more likely to binge drink, drink and drive, and engage in risky sexual behaviors, according to a new study led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher.
“We know a lot about the consumption of alcohol beverages among youth in terms of the volume of consumption,” said lead author Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at BUSPH. “What we don’t know a lot about is what underage drinkers are drinking.”
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The results, to be published in the April edition of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, http://www.ajpm-online.net/home found that 44 percent of underage drinkers surveyed favored liquor, while only 19 percent preferred beer. The study looked at 2007 data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted among public schools in eight states. The results were limited to the 7,723 youth who reported consuming at least one drink of alcohol in the past month.
“The study results suggest that youth might initiate drinking with sweeter, more-flavored alcoholic beverages like malt beverages and wine coolers, and that they progress toward harder alcoholic drinks, like beer and hard liquor and the high-risk behavior,” Siegel told the Journal.
Researchers found that boys were more likely to prefer liquor and beer than girls, and that teens “graduate” to liquor and beer from malt beverages such as Smirnoff Ice, Bacardi Silver or hard lemonade and wine coolers as they get older. Black and Hispanic teens preferred malt beverages to beer, but not to liquor. Teens who prefer liquor are much more likely to indulge in high-risk behavior, such as binge drinking, drinking and driving, smoking tobacco or marijuana and having multiple sexual partners, researchers also found.
“Liquor was the clear choice of almost half of high school students. I think it’s important to recognize that 10 or 15 years ago, that would not have been the case,” said co-author Timothy Naimi, MD, of Boston Medical Center. “In those times, beer was clearly the beverage of choice.”
Siegel and Naimi say marketing contribute to the changing preferences. In the last decade, they note, there has been a dramatic increase in advertising on cable TV “whose audiences are “disproportionately youthful compared to the general population.”
There are roughly 4,600 deaths among underage youth each year due to excessive alcohol consumption. Identifying the types of alcoholic beverages teenagers choose to drink could provide a better understanding of why they drink, said the authors, and help develop better measures to reduce youth drinking.
Submitted by Elana Zak