Summer's Coming and With It Can Come Binge Drinking

Spring break is over and summer is just a couple of months away. With time on their hands many kids drink – and adolescents who usually don’t have a lot of experience with alcohol often end up drinking too much.

Here’s some data from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) that can help you tell your kids why binge drinking is really dangerous.

Alcohol-related consequences for college students between the ages of 18-24:

Death: 1,700 die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including motor vehicle crashes
Injury: 599,000 are unintentionally injured under the influence of alcohol
Assault: More than 696,000 are assaulted by another student who has been drinking
Sexual Abuse: More than 97,000 are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape
Unsafe Sex: 400,000 have unprotected sex and more than 100,000 report having been too intoxicated to know if they consented to having sex
Academic Problems: About 25 percent of students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall
Health Problems/Suicide Attempts: More than 150,000 develop an alcohol-related health problem

If the data doesn’t do it for them here are some videos from around the world that drive the point home. Unfortunately, Blogger's linking tool is not working once again. If you want to watch these you'll have to cut and paste the URLs into your browser. I've checked all and they do work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3K_Vl0w8Lg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jftfU30xJg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWCUekDn7cw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96TS9qxnqaM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFd_1TpFAPQ&feature=related