When 20-year-old Benjamin Britt went out into the woods near Trenton, Maine, he was just joining some friends for a party. But as the group passed around bottles of vodka, an alcohol-induced disagreement broke out, and the group scattered. Britt died of hypothermia, a death that officials attributed to underage drinking.

In a Dec. 19 Bangor Daily News article, writer Abigail Curtis addressed Britt's death in the context of the area's ongoing struggles with underage drinking:

Underage drinking cost Maine $234 million in 2007, according to a research paper distributed by the Maine Office of Substance Abuse. The 2008 Maine Youth Drug and Alcohol Use Survey reported that more than a quarter of Maine high school students had used alcohol in the past month and that 12.5 percent had binged in the past two weeks.

Underlying those numbers are countless incidences of fights, car crashes, risky sexual behavior, property crime, poisoning, injury and even fetal alcohol syndrome.

While numbers of sixth- to 12th-grade students who drink seem to be declining, high-risk drinking among 18- to 25-year-olds is now on the agencys radar, said Guy Cousins, director of the Maine Office of Substance Abuse. Although it is legal to drink alcohol at age 21, younger legal drinkers are very vulnerable to problematic behaviors such as binge drinking, he said.

"Lowering the drinking age is not the answer," Cousins said. "People talk about there not being as many problems when the drinking age was lower. There were a whole lot more. They just werent reported the same way they are now."

Labels: death, underage drinking, maine

Posted By: Aspen/CRC