Discuss the Impact of Alcohol Abuse on Youths!
>>>By Charissa Ng (0608024F)

Introduction
In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of youths abusing alcohol despite knowing the detrimental consequences.
Even with the knowledge of the harm it does to the body, these youths still proceed to drink in excess. Personally, I have tried different kinds of alcohol before, and it all failed to appeal to my taste buds and I cannot imagine why it would to other people.
Thus my reasons for attempting this project is to find out why there is this increase in abuse of a substance that is not only unappealing to me, but harmful to the body to boot.

Summary of research
Annually, about 5,000 youths under the age of 21 die because of underage drinking. Even so, drinking continues to be widespread among adolescents, as shown by nationwide surveys. The average age of first use of alcohol has changed from 17 ½ in 1965 to 14 in 2003. People that start drinking before they are 15 are four times more likely to become alcohol dependent.

Why do some adolescents drink?
Developmental transitions, like puberty and increasing independence, have been associated with alcohol use. Other factors include Risk-Taking Expectancies, Personality Characteristics and Psychiatric Comorbidity, Hereditary Factors as well as Environmental Aspects.

What are the health risks?
Damage to growth, brain, liver, and the endocrine system.

Treatments for underage drinking
Out of the 1.4 million youths that needed treatment in 2002, only 227,000 received treatment. Most treatments today fail to address the need of adolescents such as the need for easier access of treatment and attention to developmental transitions. Social marketing targeted at youths is also sorely lacking.

Prevention of underage drinking
Environmental-level interventions, seeks to decrease opportunities for underage drinking, increase penalties of alcohol related laws such as raising alcohol prices, increasing minimum legal drinking age, enacting Zero-Tolerance laws and stepping up law enforcement.
Individual-level interventions, change knowledge, expectancies, attitudes, intentions, motivation, and skills so that youth are better able to resist influences and opportunities surrounding them.

Examples: The Massachusetts Saving Lives Program & The Community Prevention Trial Program

Evaluation of the resource
I think the website is reliable since it is founded by US Department of Health and Human Services and it had references and citation from where they got some of their information from and results from surveys to show that they are all true and not made up. The website is also useful because it provide a lot information regarding underage drinking and alcohol abuse like why mentioned in the summary above. The site is also a good site because it is not messy and has a good navigation system which helps since people will find it easy to navigate their way around and not get frustrated from not being able to find their way around.

Conclusion
From the research I have done, I do not see a point in drinking and that it is best if the government should harder try to promote treatment and prevention more and provide more funds to help increase the number of treatments so that there is a decrease in alcohol abuse by youths.

Source:National Institute of Health, USA. (2006, January). “Underage Drinking”. Retrieved May 21, 2008, fromhttp://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm