Drugs and Alcohol
In general most people drink responsibly and view drinking as a culturally
accepted practice; unfortunately, in some cases drinking has severe consequences.
About 1,400 students suffer alcohol-related deaths each year. And drinking is a
factor in more than 500,000 injuries, 70,000 sexual assaults and 2.1 million
incidences of impaired driving annually, according to the National Institutes of
Health. For many it has been a challenge to inform students of college drinking,
but a Web site called MyStudentBody.com that can provide helpful information to
assist with concerns relating to alcohol. Some research suggests that nearly half
of all college students engage in binge drinking, defined as having five or more
drinks in one time frame for a male and four or more for a female. This is one of
the widely debated topics concerning the college drinking culture, because some
contest the research. It does get students to think about their own drinking habits.
Another point of concern for students is that college drinking is viewed as a
rite of passage and is part of their culture. Dialogue with students seems to
suggest that they feel students need to learn how to drink, which is also a very
debatable topic. They indicate that in other cultures drinking is more normalized
and therefore they have fewer problems. The websites nudirection.org and
www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov have several articles that
address this topic. They suggest that the cultures surrounding alcohol are different,
but that nearly all cultures have some problems with alcohol abuse.
One way of dealing with the college culture of alcohol is that drinking rates
among higher-risk drinkers on American college campuses are significantly lower on
campuses that are highly diverse. Researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health
College Alcohol Study (CAS) reported these findings in their study. The study is the
first to examine the role of college student demographics and diversity in moderating
binge drinking among high-risk students. This study appears on
www.collegedrinkingprevention.gov website and contains links on topics pertaining to
alcohol.