Youth Drinking
March 23rd, 2011 at 10:00 am by David FarrarOne of the justifications for raising the purchase age to 20 is the argument that youth drinking is worse now than in the past.
A reader has sent me a report by the Foundation for Advertising Research, which has the latest data from ALAC in it. A couple of stats readers may be interested in.
Average age of initiation of drinking by youth aged 12 – 17
- 2006/07 – 13.8 years
- 2007/08 – 14.1 years
- 2008/09 – 14.3 years
- 2009/10 – 14.6 years
A pretty clear trend there, and what most would say is a good one.
Prevalance of 12 – 17 year olds who are drinkers
- 2006/07 – 52%
- 2007/08 – 52%
- 2008/09 – 50%
- 2009/10 – 32%
And that’s a dramatic drop in the prevalance of young people drinking.
Percentage of all 12 – 17 olds who drink more than once a week
- 2006/07 – 9%
- 2007/08 – 9%
- 2008/09 – 7%
- 2009/10 – 3.5%
Again a good trend.
Percentage of all youth 12-17 that consumed 5 drinks or more on the last occasion
- 2006/07 – 21.3%
- 2007/08 – 22.9%
- 2008/09 – 19.5%
- 2009/10 – 15.0%
Again a nice downwards trend.
Again all these stats come from ALAC – the Alcohol Advisory Council.
Related posts:
- Violent crimes by youth
- The right move on youth drinking
- Hopeful common sense on youth drinking
- Keep it 18 reason #1
March 23rd, 2011 at 10:12 am
So the percentage of youth drinkers who are binge drinking is increasing… we must do something!
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:14 am
DPF – where can one find an online copy of this report please, including the sample size and methodology.
Teenagers can sometimes be inclined to answer surveys using “impression management” – answering how they think they should respond, not necessarily what is a truthful answer.
For example last night on TV that teenage Australian bully got confused over the two, when he was interviewed – first he wasn’t sorry for what he did, and then with dad prompting off-camera, in the next breath says he is sorry.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:24 am
Looks like we are maturing as a society with alcohol being more a normal part of life and people growing up with it (remember one of the reasons for lowering was the lessons learnt from European countries where kids have access to alcohol but it’s a normal part of life rather than a rite of passage, and they show these trends but still have extreme fringes that can be highlighted as failures).
It also suggests that the 10% of dickheads in any society have either got worse or the press have sought out and published the more extreme drinking stuff far more, thus skewing our perception of the problem (no the Herald would never do that would they?).
But again we will knee jerk for the wowsers and hand wringers. We must legislate for a more controlled society. No we can’t trust the great unwashed to do the right things. The survey results are wrong. Find the individual who was biased/moderate and sacrifice him/her for daring to publish something that doesn’t fit the accepted premises!!!
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:52 am
DPF,
Pretty shoddy all round really – from the Foundation for Advertising Research and you for putting it up. While the figures do look to show a trend, the things that stand out like the proverbial dogs b**** are the staggering single year reductions for the 09/10 year for items 2-4.
Each of these shows a gradual reduction from 06/07 through 08/09 and then a (comparatively) enormous reduction in 09/10. That alone should have alarm bells ringing. Where are the notes to explain the sudden drop?
If our youth population was able to mature to that extent in a single year I am surprised our vintners aren’t seeking to experiment on them to find the secret.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:52 am
David,
Saw you twitter post about Mark Lundy. Have you read this article? A North And South article by Mike White.
http://www.lundytruth.com/Files/NS-lundy.pdf
Doesn’t read well. At all. If half of what is in the article is correct, the cops stitched Lundy up shockingly. And now he has cancer. Poor bastard. What a life.
[DPF: This should be in general debate. But to respond I have no doubt at all of his guilt - unlike in some cases]
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:55 am
When I was 13.8 years old both me and my friends were drinking. That was 1987.8, you had to be 20 to buy. So these figures may reflect no change in reality. Where is the comparison to pre-18 year old buy dates? Besides which, a 3 year “trend” in anything with as many variables as youth drinking is more like blip. At an anecdotal level, any decrease in drunk youths may be that it’s now quite common to be asked for ID buying alcohol – even if you’re in your mid-thirties. In 1987, money did the talking and if you behaved yourself, no one cared.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 11:34 am
I reiterate bhudson, the most rational reason for the massive drop in 2009/10 is a problem with the survey. These are pointless statistics without a link to the source, a margin of error and an attempt to explain the drop.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 11:53 am
Didn’t Lady Gaga win MTV’s “Best New Artist” in 2009?
Just saying.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 12:13 pm
If you go to the ALAC website and search for their “MONITOR” reserach you will find it is a sample size of around 1,200 12 – 17 year olds.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I simply cannot believe those figures.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 3:37 pm
Me neither wreck
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Those figures are as inconvenient to those who believe that government must do something, as science is to bible fundamentalism. But true faith will overcome reason here as well, because the public has been conditioned to believe (shock doctrine) that something must be done about the crisis they read about and believe is real. Once the public is convinced its hard to change their minds – that’s why governments usually survive more than one term.
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 6:15 pm
So the figures are rigged.
Personally, with all the “official” misinformation and nonsense stats bandied around as ‘fact’ now days I have no trust in any of this.
Vote:Unless you can show how they came to these figures it is utterly meaningless.
Oh, and the local police station is in total disagreement with these stats as well.
Youth are in trouble, and trying to rehash figures to make it all go away will not suffice as a solution.
March 23rd, 2011 at 6:17 pm
If you go to the ALAC website and search for their “MONITOR” reserach you will find it is a sample size of around 1,200 12 – 17 year olds.
So this is all based of the honesty of children that drink? possibly illegally?
Vote:Perhaps in the same period the incidence of speaking “mis-truths” has risen substantially.
March 23rd, 2011 at 6:17 pm
Graeme Edgeler @ 10:12 am, fear not, Darren Hughes is on to it as we speak!
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 9:43 pm
Logically, if you raise the limit to 20 and the under-age figures will increase: 18- and 19-year-olds will be counted.
Not having followed this, what’s the argument that says raising the limit will stop kids drinking? If they ignore the limit now….
My crowd started taking drink to parties at 15. It was experimenting, trying to be adults not kids, daring and rebellious… well, it seemed that way then.
By 18, we looked on those who went out to get wrecked as an end in itself as morons.
Leave the limit as it is and enforce it, and get parents to put a lock on the drinks cupboard and you’d reduce the kids’ access to the stuff.
And educate them that getting hammered is neither big nor clever nor something to boast about.
A lesson, she added mischievously, one or two Kb posters don’t seem to have grasped, from some late-night posts now and again
Vote:March 23rd, 2011 at 10:24 pm
The figures are rigged argument is based on the self-interest in the party doing so, ALAC has no such vested interest.
As for the local police station well, little better than heresay …
Vote:March 24th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
It’s weird to put 12-17 years olds into one group. There is such a difference in their drinking behaviour that if you oversample one group i.e. the younger ones then it throws everything out e.g. if you have 1000 17 year olds the first year and 1000 12 year olds the last year then things will look like they have improved.
Since there are 1200 people in the 12-17 year age groups then let us see the data for each age group and the number in each age group for each year.
ALAC is in a difficult position – alcohol tax brings in so much money for the government that they can’t go after the alcohol producers, they have to go after the drinkers.
Vote:March 24th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
The figues seem really odd since the amount of alcohol that is aimed at youth drinkers just continues to climb in the alcohol available for consumption statistics.
I went at had a look at the reports.
In 2005/06 it looks like a sample with ethnic proportions (roughly) equal to the population e.g. Maori 20%, Pacific 9% and Other New Zealanders (i.e. the rest) 70%. The 2006/07 looks roughly similar.
In 2008/09 it looks like a quota sample with equal ethnic numbers e.g. Maori 25%, Pacific 25% and Other 50%
In 2009/2010 it looks like a quota sample with equal ethnic numbers e.g. Maori 33%, Pacific 33% and Other 34%
So basically it looks like the sampling methodology has changed at the same time as the proportions have changed i.e. not much the first two years, a little the third year and lots the fourth, so I suspect it’s a bias caused by the design. (I do realise it has been weighted back to the population proportions.)
Vote: