Utah youths take their first drinks as young as 12 years of age. They also exhibit increasingly hazardous drinking behavior — including driving drunk and riding with people who are under the influence, according to new data.
"The present-day facts are that underage drinking in Utah is not only alarming, but it is intolerable," said George Van Komen, a Salt Lake physician and president of the Utah Alcohol Policy Coalition. "This is an unbearable affliction on our state."
"I don't know if it's my family next or yours, but it's somebody's, and we have to do something," said Ray Briscoe, who conducted the survey of drinking habits and perceptions of Utah high school students for Insight Research of Salt Lake City. The group previously studied underage drinking issues in 1996.
Quick math by Briscoe shows 43,000 young Utahns drink alcohol, a statistic that is alarming and a call to action for a group of anti-alcohol advocates.
"Utah ought to be ahead of the game," said Anna Kay Waddoups, chairman of a state committee studying drunken-driving issues. "Our statistics should be much lower than they are."
Members of the Utah Alcohol Policy Coalition, Utah lawmakers and members of the American Medical Association announced the results of the survey Tuesday. Among the findings of 600 young people surveyed between ages 14 and 20:
• 41 percent of youths between 12 and 18 have consumed alcohol.
• 30 percent of those teenagers who drink alcohol do so daily.
• 41 percent of underage drinkers say they have driven a car while under the influence of alcohol.
"We are producing an entirely new generation of drunken drivers," Van Komen said.
Because privacy issues in schools prevented researchers from collecting interviews there, researchers went to high school basketball games in various Utah counties and gave students $1 to complete the survey.
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