Drinking and Driving

Young people with serious alcohol problems are much more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol alone or drugs and alcohol combined than youth without alcohol problems (57 percent versus 5 percent)(Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figures).

Problems With Other Drugs

Young people with serious alcohol problems are much more likely to also use illegal drugs - including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, pain relievers, tranquilizers, stimulants and sedatives - than youth without alcohol problems. The overall prevalence of other drug use is 34 percent for youthful problem drinkers versus 3 percent for those that don't have alcohol problems. Young people with serious alcohol problems are more than 11 times as likely to meet established diagnostic criteria for drug use as youth without these disorders, both overall and in each age group (Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figures)

Problems With Law Enforcement

Young people with serious alcohol problems are much more likely to be booked for breaking the law than youth without drinking problems. Not including arrests or bookings for minor traffic infractions, 23 percent of problem drinking youth are booked versus 4 percent of youth without drinking problems (Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figure).

Young people with alcohol problems are:

• substantially more likely to report one or more instances of attacking someone with the intent to harm (25 percent versus 6 percent),
• more than five times as likely to report carrying a handgun at least once (12 percent versus 2 percent) and
• nearly six times more likely to report stealing or trying to steal items worth $50 or more (20 percent versus 3 percent).

Young people with alcohol problems were 12 times more likely to report selling drugs than youth without these problems (24 percent versus 2 percent) (Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figures).

Problems With School and Work

Students with serious alcohol problems miss substantially more school days than students without these disorders. Problem drinking students missed 21 school days per school year while students without alcohol problems missed 11 days per year, a difference of 10 days per student per year.

Adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 with alcohol problems were significantly more likely to report that they:

• did not like school (38 percent versus 20 percent ),
• did not feel that school work was important (38 percent versus 22 percent),
• found school or work boring (39 percent versus 25 percent ) and that
• what they were learning in school was unimportant to their lives (21 percent versus 12 percent ).

(Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figures)

Smoking

Young people with alcohol problems are twice as likely to report having ever smoked (89.9 percent versus 40 percent) and having smoked in the past 30 days (62 percent versus 45 percent). The differences were even more pronounced when evaluating the different age groups, with people aged 12-15 with alcohol problems being more than three times more likely to report ever smoking than their peers without alcohol problems (87.1 percent versus 23.1 percent). In terms of heavy smoking, defined as more than a half a pack a day, young people with alcohol problems were four times more likely to be heavy smokers (16.4 percent versus 4.3 percent). (Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figure).

Emergency Department Use

Youth with alcohol problems reported use of hospital emergency services nearly 50 percent more often than their peers. They report an average of 0.85 emergency room visits annually compared to the rate of 0.58 times annually among adolescents without alcohol problems. (Find out MORE about how Ensuring Solutions calculated these figures)