Live, from anywhere, it's Friday night: time for the youth of
America to ''rage.'' Time also to get broasted, buzzed, catatonic,
messed up, ripped, screwed, trashed, wasted, zoned out. Time, to put
it in language older folks can understand, to get totally, hopelessly
drunk. Not at bars, of course: everywhere in America you have to be
21 to drink there -- legally, that is -- and anyway it's not the hip
thing to do. These days teenagers buy into keg parties at homes where
parents have left town for the weekend, where dangerous chugalug
games are played to get booze and beer flowing into their system
faster. Or they hang out at impromptu, one-night-only underground
clubs that youthful entrepreneurs have set up in abandoned factories
or warehouses, with the same goal in mind.
Despite the fact that the nation's per capita alcohol consumption
has been on a decline for years, drinking among minors, in the words
of Surgeon General Antonia Novello, ''is out of control.''
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specifically, ''unsupervised parties where kids drink are out of
control. And the perception among parents that drinking is O.K. is
out of control. We're going to lose a whole generation if we don't
pay attention.''
A study issued by Novello's office last June showed that 8 million
of the nation's 20.7 million youths in grades 7 through 12 drink
alcoholic beverages every week. Of those kids, 454,000 admit to
weekly ''binges'' -- meaning they consume five or more drinks in a
single brief sitting. Another study, by the University of Michigan,
reports that almost one-third of high school seniors drink to excess
at least once every two weeks. And according to a survey prepared for
USA Today, 46% of student leaders say drinking is their high school's
biggest problem, followed by apathy. ''Serious drinking...