Binge or excessive drinking is the most serious problem affecting social life, health, and education on college campuses today. Binge or excessive drinking by college students has become a social phenomenon in which college students do not acknowledge the health risks that are involved with their excessive drinking habits. Furthermore college students do not know enough about alcohol in general and what exactly it does to the body, or they do not pay attention to the information given to them. College students across the United States end up missing class, having unprotected sex, damaging property, and getting injured as a result of abusing alcohol. Besides alcohol poisoning, there are many cancers and diseases associated with alcohol abuse that ultimately lead to death. Liver cancer, breast cancer, and skin cancer can all be associated with alcohol abuse (Drinking: A Students Guide, 2001). Also heart and liver disease can be associated with alcohol abuse (Drinking: A Students Guide, 2001). Ultimately the over all wellness among Colleges and Universities in the United States drops dramatically when alcohol is abused.

Students who go to college believe that binge or excessive drinking is a

estimated 4 billion cans of beer annually. The total amount of alcohol consumed by college students each year is 430 million gallons, enough for every college and university in the United States to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool" (Drinking: A Students Guide, 2001). Mix this amount of alcohol consumption in between young men and women away from their parents for the first time and what you have is STD heaven. "As many as 70% of college students admit to having engaged in sexual activity primarily as a result of being under the influence of alcohol, or to having sex they wouldn't have had if they had been sober" (The College Experience, 2001). An outstanding "60% of college women who are infected with STD's, including genital herpes and AIDS, report that they were under the influence of alcohol at the time they had intercourse with the infected person" (The College Experience, 2001). "According to the Center for Disease Control, 1 in 1500 college students is HIV positive, and the fastest-growing populations of American people infected with HIV are teenagers and young adults in college" (The College Experience, 2001). From all the statistics reported above, extremely large amounts of college students still abuse alcohol. A prevalent attraction is how cheap it is for college students to obtain alcohol in college and how much the media exposes college students to the idea that drinking alcohol is a social norm. "Beer manufacturers spend an estimated $15-20 million annually to promote their products to college students (Drinking: A Students Guide, 2001). Simply offering scare tactics about alcohol abuse with impressive statistics and banged up cars really does not work completely to reduce the amount of excessive drinking going on in college. Successful solutions must be collaborative in nature. In conclusion, alcohol abuse among college students is a social phenomenon that is currently normative in nature. In other words, most everyone going to college and most everyone already in college expect to drink excessive amounts of alcohol because it's socially accepted, and therefore college students do not view their excessive drinking habits as a problem.

There are many definitions associated with alcohol and alcohol abuse in general that need to be clarified. Most

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