The Binge Drinking Culture - what can we do about it?

There has been a great deal of recent media attention on youth drinking, binge drinking in particular, and the well known harmful effects of abusing alcohol.

Starting with the infamous "Undie 500" which televised students running wild, fuelled by excess quantities of alcohol, there's been an ongoing series of alarming headlines.

This is not new nor is it peculiar to New Zealand - there are similar alarms sounding around the world. But as pressures grow to "fix" the problem there is a need for informed public debate as to what can be done about it and by whom.

What is binge drinking? The best definition is drinking to drunkenness, that is, to a level where a youth would describe themselves as "wasted". Older adults may discover themselves feeling rather disinhibited, talking loudly and probably behaving out of character.

A well known example of youth binge drinking is seen in the southern states of the US. Every weekend literally thousands of young Americans stream across the US-Mexican border to patronise bars in Tijuana, where the drinking age is 18 in contrast to 21 years in the US.

Many promotions have a fixed entry price covering "all you can drink". About 30 per cent of those who return to the US between midnight and 6am have blood alcohol concentrations much greater than 0.08mg/100ml (New Zealand's legal limit for drivers over 20 years of age).

This provides a classic example of some of the conditions that produce binge drinking.

Reading the history of New Zealand's prohibition in the 1920s shows a similar picture; legal denial led to intermittent binges. The prohibition period was followed by regulations on the sale of alcohol which included 6pm closing of all bars.

That produced a "6pm swill" where drinkers drank as much as possible before the bars shut at 6pm. That's a good way to teach unsafe drinking!

How many drinks over how long did these youths need to get over 0.08/100ml, a level at which most police would agree their driving is impaired?

By my calculations, based on what the researchers found, it would be about 11 of our standard drinks for males and nine for females over a four-hour period.

Why do people binge drink? Coleman (2005) interviewed 64 British 14 to 17-year-olds looking at their motivations for binge drinking based on his definition of "self reported drunkenness".

Their key motivations related to social facilitation and being more relaxed in social settings including "pulling" a sex partner, having a laugh, individual benefits such as "the buzz". Also peer behaviour influences such as wanting to be part of the group, and wider social norms such as the way they saw society at large drinking.