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Back in 2003, responding to a CDC report on binge drinking, I noted that "one man's dinner party is another man's binge—especially if the other man has a degree in public health." Based on more recent survey data, the CDC now warns that "binge drinking* is a bigger problem than previously thought," involving 38 million American adults. That asterisk is well-earned, because the CDC continues to define "binge drinking" as "men drinking 5 or more alcoholic drinks within a short period of time or women drinking 4 or more drinks within a short period of time." If a "short period...

With 38 million Americans involved in binge drinking, it is only a matter of time until the CDC calls for the repeal of the Twenty First Amendment.

OXFORD, Ohio – Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away — not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of "Animal House" and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News & World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. The school suspended two of the sororities and put the third on probation. A task force is reviewing discipline...

<p>The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel was found dead in a Washington Heights apartment under mysterious circumstances yesterday morning after a daylong drinking binge with a man he had just met in a Midtown bar, law-enforcement sources said.</p>

The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel died early Monday after a night of drinking that ended in the seedy Manhattan apartment of a pub crawl acquaintance. Andrew Koppel, a 40-year-old attorney with the New York City Housing Authority with a history of alcohol problems, was declared dead around 1:30 a.m., according to the New York Post. Police sources told the newspaper Koppel had stumbled two and a half hours earlier into the Washington Heights apartment of Russell Wimberly, a waiter he had met 12 hours earlier in a Hell's Kitchen bar. A roommate of Wimberly, Belinda Caban, told...

University Researchers Discover Denial Malcolm A. Kline, March 12, 2010 Once again, university researchers have gone to great lengths, and expense, to learn something that less credentialed Americans have known for generations. “Researchers say that some anti-binge drinking public service announcements have an opposite effect,” Sara Schwartz reports in The Washington Examiner. “Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management says that public service ads intended to reduce binge drinking are actually leading to more of it.” “The university performed a five-part study in which researchers showed anti-alcohol ads to 1,200 undergrads and interviewed them afterward.” They could have saved themselves the...

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he'd personally like to see the legal drinking age lifted to 21 years. But there would have to be rigorous debate and evidence that the policy could reduce binge drinking before the government would consider it, he says. What do you thinks about the legal drinking age? Should it be raised to 21? Leave your comment below. "If the evidence is there and it is capable of being proven that it works, then we (will) look at these things and make a decision," Mr Rudd said, when quizzed on ABC Television's Q&A program on Monday...

It's no secret to students that coed dorms are more fun than same-sex dorms. But they can also fuel very unhealthy behavior that might otherwise be moderated. A new study finds university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week. And no surprise, they're also likely to have more sexual partners, the study found. Also, pornography use was higher among students in coed dorms. Some 90 percent of U.S. college dorms are now coed.

(edit)Police are handing out the footwear to help drunken ladettes get home uninjured after spotting a number of women staggering home in unsuitable shoes.  (edit) 'Sometimes people get drunk and you see them carrying footwear which is inappropriate,' he said.  'The emphasis is on providing replacement footwear for people to get home in, should they find their high heels uncomfortable, inappropriate or soiled.'   The footwear will be paid for by £30,000 worth of funding secured from the Home Office by Safer Communities Torbay. Police chief, Supt Chris Singer said: 'Linking in with our pastors this funding represents a significant opportunity...

Anti-drinking ads which show stupid drunk behaviour inadvertently glamorise Medical Studies/Trials Published: Monday, 10-Dec-2007 . .   Advertising campaigns in Britain meant to discourage young people from drinking to excess have come in for some harsh criticism from researchers and comes at a time when experts are saying alcohol abuse is a widespread problem among the young. The researchers say adverts which focus on the idiotic behaviour carried out when people are drunk may be "catastrophically misconceived" and may backfire by inadvertently glamorising the habit. In a study, led by a research team at the University of Bath, researchers...

To combat underage binge drinking, the national legal drinking age should be lowered to 18, a former college president is saying. Since releasing a 250-page study on the societal effects of modern drinking laws, Middlebury College President emeritus John McCardell has campaigned across the country calling for states to lower the legal drinking age to 18 because he observed fewer alcohol-related problems 30 years ago, when 18-year-olds could legally drink. "Before the law changed, it wasn't perfect," McCardell said. "But what you had then was out-in-the-open, intergenerational [drinking]." Since then, McCardell, who is launching the nonprofit group Choose Responsibility this...

Last month, Judge Charles Harris announced on the Today programme that "a very large proportion of domestic violence is committed by people who have been drinking - and if they hadn't been so drinking so much, they wouldn't be so violent". 'Twas ever thus. In 1751, novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding wrote: "Wretches are often brought before me, charged with theft and robbery, whom I am forced to confine before they are in a condition to be examined: and when they have afterwards become sober, I have plainly perceived from the state of case that the gin alone was the...

In the coming weeks, millions of students will begin their fall semester of college, with all the attendant rituals of campus life: freshman orientation, registering for classes, rushing by fraternities and sororities and, in a more recent nocturnal college tradition, "pregaming" in their rooms. Pregaming is probably unfamiliar to people who went to college before the 1990s. But it is now a common practice among 18-, 19- and 20-year-old students who cannot legally buy or consume alcohol. It usually involves sitting in a dorm room or an off-campus apartment and drinking as much hard liquor as possible before heading out...

Does this guy Jose have a day/night job other than calling into Talk Radio shows throughout the day? I keep hearing him call into several talk radio shows all the time. I find it rather suspect the way mystery shoppers are plants for retail stores. Pretty transparent... Zzzzz... Geez, (lol) at least have him change his name.

New Research Reveals Binge Drinking Initiated by Religious Anglicans in 1660s Date :20/07/2004 Type : Press Release Drinking Woodcut As David Blunkett claims a rise in binge drinking is helping to breed a culture of ‘thuggery and intimidation’ new research from the University of Warwick reveals that rather than originating the 1960s binge drinking was rife in the 1660s. What’s more, it was religious Anglicans, demonstrating their loyalty to the Crown in the Civil War that initiated heavy drinking. From early on the British developed a culture where drunkenness is a rite of passage, especially for the young as they...

White males cause each other to drink heavily. The fewer of them there are, the less likely they are to binge drink. So says a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health and Social Behavior. The findings are published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation - the big NPR patron – supported the study. Yes, the evil white male is the new villain in America. Just as in the hit movie "Sum of All Fears," white men are to blame for society’s evils. Just listen to this lovely...

<p>If you woke up on New Year's Day with a hangover, you must have missed the federal government's not-so-subtle effort to shame you into more moderate celebration. The feds hope to compel moderation in the future.</p> <p>"Binge drinking on the rise in U.S." was the message from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on New Year's Eve.</p>

Madison - Wanna get so drunk you vandalize a car? Want mom and dad to know about it? If you're a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, you might soon have no choice in the latter. The university plans to review its guidelines on parental notification when dealing with students who commit alcohol-related violations, Chancellor John Wiley said Wednesday. Usually, unless a student is in a life-threatening condition, the university doesn't notify parents. But considering binge drinking is a UW-Madison problem that won't go away, that procedure will face review, Wiley said. At least one student leader expressed skepticism. "You're...

A study released today shows binge drinking by students at women-only colleges has increased since 1993 while the practice has remained constant at coeducational campuses. "Although women at all-women colleges still drink considerably less than women at coed schools, this finding could be an important shift among female students at these colleges," said Henry Wechsler, the study's principal investigator and director of College Alcohol Studies at the Harvard School of Public Health. "Our previous surveys found that attending college at an all-women school was very protective," Wechsler said. "That seems to be less so now." The survey was conducted in...

A generation ago, some school districts fought backwater parents to establish smoking areas in high schools. Smoking was illegal, tobacco was unhealthy and all that. But kids were going to smoke anyway. Administrators had to lure smokers out of bathrooms and back into class. Suggesting school smoking areas was hip.It didn't matter that teens puffed away on display as role models, that administrators were ushering students toward emphysema and lung cancer. What mattered was not to be "square." It would be like wearing a narrow tie or a crew cut!Today, smoking is out. But the same adult attitudes thrive.The...