EINNEWS, November 25—The recent spate of campus deaths and hospitalizations related to alcohol-caffeine drinks has refocused authorities’ on the problem of campus and non-campus drinking.
According to the website collegedrinkingprevention.gov, 1,825 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes.
Another 600,000 are injured and nearly 800,000 more are victims of alcohol-fueled assaults, including sexual assaults.
Fully 25 percent of college students in a recent study reported that they were missing class, falling behind and doing poorly because of drinking.
It’s estimated that 3,360,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 drive under the influence of alcohol, according the collegedrinkingprevention.gov.
A report this week by the Boston Health Commission revealed that nearly 1,000 Boston area college-age students have flooded emergency rooms this year with alcohol-related problems.
The executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, calls this “a serious problem and a burden on the health care system.”
The study was reported by the Boston Globe and showed that alcohol-related visits spike from September to November, coinciding with the beginning of fall semesters. By mid-November this year 930 college-age students had hit the area’s emergency rooms with problems related to alcohol.
And this has not been an unusual year, according to the health commission’s analysis. The group estimates that since 2008, 18-22 year-olds have made 40,000 visits to emergency rooms, 2 percent of which were alcohol-related.
For more beverages news, visit Beverage Industry Today (http://beverages.einnews.com), a beverages media monitoring service from EIN News.
