Newly-legal drinkers often purchase alcohol for their underage peers, creating a "trickle-down" effect. [34] Surveys show that the most common source of alcohol among 18- to 20-year olds is their 21- to 24-year-old peers. [35] MLDA 21 helps prevent underage binge drinking by making it harder for people under 21 to obtain alcohol. Binge drinking peaks among 21- to 25-year-olds at 45.9%, while the binge drinking rates of those aged 12-13, 14-15, 16-17, and 18-20 are 1.5%, 7.8%, 19.4%, and 35.7% respectively. [23][36] MLDA 21 exerts valuable social pressure on potential underage drinkers.
Substance abuse usual begins with casual or experimental use in adolescence. Alcohol is the most prevalent drug abused in our society. Almost twenty million Americans can be defined as alcoholics, in comparison to the some 1 million that use
Although African Americans constituted almost 42% of the entire follow-up cohort, they were only 6% of those reporting any Meth use. With regard to recidivism, those who used Meth (81.6%) were significantly more likely than those who did not use Meth (53.9) to have been returned to custody for any reason or to report committing any violent acts in the 30 day prior to the follow-up interview (23.6% vs. 6.8%, respectively)." The author also provides charts to depict the
This month a Rand study that followed 3,400 people from seventh grade through age 23 reported that those who had three or more drinks within the past year, or any drink in the past month, were likelier to use nicotine and illegal drugs, to have stolen items within the past year and to have problems in school. In a report issued last December, the American Medical Association found that teen drinking -- not bingeing, just drinking -- can seriously damage growth processes of the brain and that such damage "can be long term and irreversible." The AMA warned that "short term or moderate drinking impairs learning and memory far more in youth than in adults" and that "adolescents need only drink half as much to suffer the same negative effects." This exhaustive study concluded that teen drinkers "perform worse in school, are more likely to fall behind and have an increased risk of social problems, depression, suicidal thoughts and
When children are in the seventh grade they are between the ages 12 and 13 so that example is not necessarily true for all seventh graders. She also says that “most studies of risky behavior begin in 15 years olds. Along with this risk behavior is crime and Hymowitz says that children under the age of 15 represent the minority of juvenile arrests. So, this statement represents children that are 15, 14, and 13 years of age which does not define a tween according to Hymowitz. She then brings up a statistic that 25 percent of the children under 15 represent total court cases.
The average drinking age around the world is 15.9 years of age. According to drinkingage.procon.org, 69% of countries have a set drinking age between 18 and 19 years old. So now the question is why does the United States have such a high drinking age compared to most all other countries. Statistics show that many countries with the minimum drinking age of 18 have better drunk driving reports than the United States. In 2009, there were 10,389 fatalities in the United States alone due to drinking and driving.
Decrease in Juvenile Crime In 2001, according to the FBI, juveniles accounted for 17% of all arrests and 15% of all violent crime arrests (Snyder, 2003). In the late 1980s, juvenile violent crime arrest had a substantial growth then peaked in 1994. However, between 1994 and 2001, the juvenile arrest rate for Violent Crime Index fell 44% and as a result, the juvenile Violent Crime Index arrest rate was the lowest since 1983 (Snyder, 2003). Furthermore, in 2001, the rate of juvenile arrests for Violent Crime Index offenses that included forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault and murder declined for the seventh consecutive year. The juvenile arrest rate for each of these offenses has been declining steadily since the mid-1990s; for murder, the rate fell 70% and manslaughter arrest rate fell 40% from its 1993 peak through 2001.
Obesity itself cannot solely be blamed on the high consumption of soda or sugary-drinks, but there is a strong correlation between the two. Boston Children’s Hospital preformed a study with 224 overweight, or obese, high school students. Half of the recipients received free home deliveries of zero-calorie drinks along with water; others received a fifty dollar gift card. According to this study, “after one year, the gift card recipients had gained more weight than those who got the calorie-free drinks” (“Getting Fat on Sugary-Drinks” 8). The evidence provided in this study concludes that soda can be a leading factor in obesity rates, and that water or lower-calorie drinks can help prevent obesity.
Music is the second top seller in entertainment spending, with 92% of kids 14-17 owning an MP3, and 84% of adults age 18-24 owning some type of MP3. With this much of the population owning MP3s, the music industry is booming with the sale of MP3 downloads. On the other hand, 63% of people download illegally, and only 52% of music downloaded was paid for. This means that, as a nation, maybe the problem isn’t the “cleanliness” of music, but the way we get this music. The people that support censorship should try to make it harder to download music illegally.
These monsters have pushed the marijuana, heroin, LSD /PCP, cocaine, crack, and now the meth epidemics. In 2008, the White House released the ADAM II annual which reported, “Methamphetamine remains primarily a regional phenomenon. In Sacramento and Portland 35 and 15% percent of arrestees respectively test positive in 2008 for meth…Meth positives are lowest in New York (less than 1%)New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Charlotte and only slightly higher in (2-3%) in Denver, Indianapolis, Washington DC and Minneapolis. The practice of injecting methamphetamine is most common in Portland (32% injected at last use), but less common elsewhere.” (Cohen, et al.,