Cause and Effect of College Binge Drinking
             As young people enter the culture of the college campus, they are confronted with many challenges and opportunities: the opportunity to be independent of parental control; the need to conform; and the insecurity of a new social setting. While national surveys have documented a significant decline in the use of other drugs by high school seniors and college-age youths, there have been only modest declines in the numbers reporting binge drinking. Teenagers and young adults drink alcoholic beverages at about the same rates they did five years ago. Binge drinking increases the risk for alcohol-related injury, especially for young people, who often combine alcohol with other high risk activities, such as impaired driving. The four leading injury-related causes of death among youths under the age of 20 are motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and drowning. Alcohol is involved in many of these deaths. Sexual encounters with their inherent risks of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV exposure, as well as date rape and other violence, can and do occur more frequently while students are consuming large amounts of alcohol by binge drinking.
             Binge drinking, or the partying lifestyle of young people, may be related to an environment that appears to support heavy drinking. Youths report that alcohol is more easily available to them today than it was five years ago, and there is a high correlation between availability and use. The national binge drinking rate among college students is 42.7 percent, according to a Harvard study stated Diane Carroll (3D). One of the more troubling statistics is that binge drinking seems to be more prevalent in high school students notes Linda Mei (51-53). Linda Mei also stated that If they were binge drinkers in high school, they were three times more likely to binge in college (51-53). One of the impacts is the promotional advertising that is target...