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Houston’s Harris County has the highest rate of drunk-driving fatalities among populous counties in the U.S., and issues about 10,000 drunk-driving citations annually, in what District Attorney Pat Lykos termed a „pandemic plague“ of alcohol-related problems on local roads. (Source: Join Together, 6/22/09)

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Alcohol-related deaths, heavy drinking and drunk driving are all increasing among U.S. college students, according to a report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
Alcohol-related deaths among college students ages 18-24 rose from 1,440 in 1998 to 1,825 in 2005, according to the study by researcher Ralph Hingson, director of NIAAA’s Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research, and colleagues. Most of the deaths were due to traffic-related incidents. During the same period, the proportion of students reporting binge drinking rose from 42 percent to 45 percent, and reported drunk driving rose from 26.5 percent of students to 29 percent. (Source: Joint Together, 6/19/09)

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Excessive drinking is deeply ingrained in military culture, and service members are more likely than the general public to drive drunk, drink while underage, and be intoxicated while on duty, according to a study from the University of Minnesota and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Source: Join Together, 6/13/09)

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Clashing over penalties for first-time drunk driving offenses, Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has severed its relationship with the alcohol-industry funded Century Council. MADD officials said that the Century Council violated a pledge to remain neutral and instead fought against MADD-backed state legislation that would impose tougher penalties for drunk-driving first offenders. MADD also asserted that the Century Council has overemphasized initiatives targeting repeat drunk-driving offenders at the expense of programs aimed at the broader problem of drinking and driving. (Source: Join Together, 6/10/09)

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Researchers from the Curtin University of Technology in Australia have uncovered some of the secret workings and concerns of the international alcohol industry.
The information was uncovered by Curtin’s WA Tobacco Document Searching Program. This Program looks at confidential tobacco industry documents that have been accessible since the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) which required that millions of previously internal tobacco industry documents were to be made publicly available. “We realised that some international tobacco companies have owned alcohol companies, so we could obtain information on this industry as well,” said Mike Daube, Curtin’s Professor of Health Policy. These once confidential internal documents provide new evidence on the drinks industry’s concerns about possible alcohol control measures as well as the arguments and strategies they use to prevent any action that might impact on their sales. Top 10 alcohol industry concerns: …(Source: Eurocare Newsletter April/May 09)

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– But Also Are Unaware That They Do So.
A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh suggests that a moderate dose of alcohol increases a person’s mind wandering, while at the same time reducing the likelihood of noticing that one’s mind has wandered.
These findings have potentially important implications for understanding the disruptive effects of alcohol. For example, the observation that alcohol increases mind-wandering suggests another reason why alcohol makes driving dangerous-drunk drivers may lose track of what they are doing.
Moreover, the finding that alcohol reduces meta-consciousness may explain why people drive when they are drunk-by reducing their ability to assess their current state, intoxicated people may fail to realize how intoxicated they are and thus inadequately appraise the danger of driving. (Source: Medical News Today, 5/6/09)

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Mandating drunk-driving charges against young drivers with any detectable amount of alcohol in their bodies has had no effect on the number of alcohol-related crashes or fatalities in the states where they have been implemented, according to a new study from a Sam Houston State University economics expert. Economics professor Darren Grant drew his conclusions from an analysis of 30,000 fatalities in nighttime crashes involving drivers under age 21, comparing data from states with zero-tolerance laws to those without such laws. (Source: Join Together, 5/5/09)

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Media Ignores Health Consequences Of Drinking And Driving Among Young Celebrities. The recent drinking and driving (DUI) arrests of celebrities Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, Michelle Rodriguez and Lindsay Lohan yielded widespread news coverage, however, very little of it offered any public health context, according to a new report by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. „Media are an important source of information about the consequences of alcohol consumption, and influence how individuals define acceptable behavior,“ said Katherine Smith, PhD, lead author of the study and assistant professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. (Source: Medical News Today, 4/23/09)

Researchers who reviewed autopsy reports found that 21 percent of New York City bicyclists who died within three hours of their accidents had alcohol in their system. The researchers drew on data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene regarding bicycling accidents in the city between 1996 and 2005. Six percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes with bicycles were under the influence of alcohol. (Source: Join Together, 4/10/09)

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State laws that prohibit people under the age of 21 from purchasing or possessing alcohol, and from driving with any alcohol in their system save 732 lives a year in the United States, according to a study just released that has examined 23 years of research on the subject. The study further shows that if every state adopted ‚use and lose‘ laws – suspending the license of anyone under 21 cited for possession, consumption or attempt to purchase alcohol – an additional 165 lives would be saved. (Source: Medical News Today, 4/8/09

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