Drinking Teens Eschewing Beer for Hard Liquor

Four-state CDC study tracks teens' alcohol preferences.

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, July 30, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- Hard liquor is the drink of choice in four states among 40 percent of teenagers who try alcohol, according to a new U.S. government survey of teenage drinking.

Bourbon, rum, scotch, vodka and whiskey were consumed more than beer by high school students who drank in Arkansas, New Mexico, Nebraska and Wyoming, according to a report in the current issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the most part, the finding held true for both genders and across all racial groups.

"The rate of teen drinking is pretty dang high," said Dr. James Garbutt, a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "It is intriguing that hard liquor is the preferred beverage. I wouldn't intuitively have thought that," he added.

In an editorial, CDC experts stress that the statistics from the four states may not indicate what is going on nationally among teenagers who drink. But they added, "The findings in this report might reflect an emerging trend in usual beverage consumed among underage drinkers that has been reported in other studies."

"Monitoring the Future (MTF), a national survey of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students, found that among 12th-grade students, the prevalence of liquor consumption during the 30 days before the survey was higher in 2005 (36.4 percent) than in 1990 (30.8 percent)."

The CDC researchers culled data from a youth risk behavior survey conducted in 2005 that focused on the four states. The number of teens surveyed ranged from 1,615 in Arkansas to 5,634 in New Mexico. The prevalence of drinking ranged from 42.3 percent in New Mexico to 45.4 percent in Wyoming.

In all the states in the survey, liquor was the most popular drink, ranging from 34.1 percent in Nebraska to 44.7 percent in Arkansas. This was followed by beer or malt liquor. Wine was the least popular drink, ranging from just 1.6 percent in Arkansas and Wyoming to 3.1 percent in New Mexico.