• Alcohol is the most commonly used drug among children and adolescents. A higher percentage of youth ages 12–20 use alcohol (29 percent) than use tobacco (23.3 percent) or illegal drugs (14.9 percent ).
• In 2002, about 2 million youth ages 12–20 drank 5 or more drinks on 1 occasion,* 5 or more times a month (and more than 7 million reported this level of consumption at least once in the survey month).  
• Alcohol use by persons under age 21 poses both acute and long-term risks.
  • In 2002, 1.5 million youth ages 12–17 met the criteria for admission to alcohol treatment (of these, only 120,000 received treatment).
  • Alcohol is the leading contributor to causes of death for persons under age 21.
    • Each year, about 1,900 persons under age 21 die in motor vehicle crashes that involve underage drinking. (About another 500 persons over age 21 also die in these crashes.)
    • Alcohol also is involved in about 1,600 homicides and 300 suicides among persons under age 21.
    • About 1,600 persons under age 21 die from alcohol-related unintentional injuries (not related to motor vehicle crashes).**
  • Forty percent of those who start drinking before age 15 meet the criteria for alcohol dependence at some point in their lives.
  • Research indicates that the human brain continues to develop into a person’s early twenties and that exposure of the developing brain to alcohol may have long-lasting effects on intellectual capabilities and may increase the likelihood of alcohol addiction.
• Underage drinking results in serious secondhand effects.
• Of the approximately 2,200 persons who die annually in traffic crashes involving drinking drivers under age 21, almost half are persons other than the drinking driver.

* If a typical 160-pound male drinks 5 standard drinks over a 2-hour period, he would reach a blood alcohol content of .08, making him legally drunk in all 50 States .

** A proportion, but not all, of these deaths are caused by underage drinking. Since this represents deaths due to a range of causes in persons aged 0 to 21, it is difficult to estimate this proportion.

The statistics above were used in outreach for National Alcohol Screening Day 2005.