Alcohol takes its toll on Europe's youth.
Year: 2001
Type: article
Abstract: Whether it is drinks or drugs -- getting high seems to be increasingly popular among European teenagers. In most European countries, today's 16-year-olds consume more alcohol, cannabis and other drugs than ever. And they're paying a price. Alcohol is to blame for one in four deaths of young European men aged 15 to 29. These bleak findings were presented in late February at European Ministerial Conference on Young People and Alcohol in Stockholm, where WHO and Swedish government had convened European health ministers, other high-ranking decision-makers and young citizens from 51 European countries to discuss impact of alcohol and drugs on health of Europe's coming generations -- and to sketch out a region-wide action plan to keep them safe and dry. Concerted measures are necessary, says Dr Cees Goos, coordinator of WHO's Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Unit in Copenhagen, because the alcohol industry is out to aggressively infiltrate their future market. They're sponsoring fun events, they put their banners on web pages, they're trying everything to get at young people. And they seem to be getting results, if findings of 1999 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD), which were presented in Stockholm, are anything to go by. Conducted by Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN), ESPAD project collects data by questionnaire survey on alcohol, tobacco and drug use among 15-16-year-old high school students in 30 European countries. Altogether, nearly 100 000 students participated in 1999 survey. According to report, binge drinking, that is, having five or more drinks in a row, has increased by 21% to 55% in almost half of countries; heading list is Slovenia, where number of binge drinkers has more than tripled. As in 1995, when first ESPAD was conducted, alcohol use among youngsters is still most prevalent in Denmark, Ireland and United Kingdom, where between 36% and 51% of teenagers had imbibed alcohol 20 times or more within last 12 months. Not surprisingly frequency of drunkenness has also increased. Among countries with highest alcohol intoxication rates, proportion of 16-year-olds who were drunk three times or more within last 30 days rose from 21% to 30% in Denmark and from 15% to 24% in Ireland, while rates in Finland and United Kingdom remained largely unchanged at about 18% and 24%. What's more, illicit drug use also rose by 20-400% in 30 countries as a whole. …
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Author: M Hagmann
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1501161027