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Journal of
Studies on Alcohol and Drugs |
Miller, T. R.; Levy, D. T.; Spicer, R. S.; and Taylor, D. M.
Journal of Studies on Alcohol, vol. 67, issue 4, pgs. 519-528 (2006)
ABSTRACT.
Objective: Despite minimum-purchase-age laws, young people regularly
drink alcohol. This study estimated the magnitude and costs of problems
resulting from underage drinking by category-traffic crashes, violence,
property crime, suicide, burns, drownings, fetal alcohol syndrome,
high-risk sex, poisonings, psychoses, and dependency treatment-and
compared those costs with associated alcohol sales. Previous studies
did not break out costs of alcohol problems by age.
Method:
For each category of alcohol-related problems, we estimated fatal and
nonfatal cases attributable to underage alcohol use. We multiplied
alcohol-attributable cases by estimated costs per case to obtain total
costs for each problem.
Results: Underage drinking accounted
for at least 16% of alcohol sales in 2001. It led to 3,170 deaths and
2.6 million other harmful events. The estimated $61.9 billion bill
(relative SE = 18.5%) included $5.4 billion in medical costs, $14.9
billion in work loss and other resource costs, and $41.6 billion in
lost quality of life. Quality-of-life costs, which accounted for 67% of
total costs, required challenging indirect measurement.
Alcohol-attributable violence and traffic crashes dominated the costs.
Leaving aside quality of life, the societal harm of $1 per drink
consumed by an underage drinker exceeded the average purchase price of
$0.90 or the associated $0.10 in tax revenues.
Conclusions:
Recent attention has focused on problems resulting from youth use of
illicit drugs and tobacco. In light of the associated substantial
injuries, deaths, and high costs to society, youth drinking behaviors
merit the same kind of serious attention. (J. Stud. Alcohol 67:
519-528, 2006).
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