As young people enter the culture of the college campus, they are confronted with many challenges and opportunities: the opportunity to be independent of parental control; the need to conform; and the insecurity of a new social setting. While national surveys have documented a significant decline in the use of other drugs by high school seniors and college-age youths, there have been only modest declines in the numbers reporting binge drinking. Teenagers and young adults drink alcoholic beverages at about the same rates they did five years ago. Binge drinking increases the risk for alcohol-related injury, especially for young people, who often combine alcohol with other high risk activities, such as impaired driving. The four leading injury-related causes of death among youths under the age of 20 are motor vehicle crashes, homicides, suicides, and drowning. Alcohol is involved in many of these deaths. Sexual encounters with their inherent risks of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV exposure, as well as date rape and other violence, can and do occur more frequently while students are consuming large amounts of alcohol by binge drinking.

Being white, involved in athletics, or a resident of a fraternity or sorority made it more likely that a student would be a binge drinker.

Cornell Chronicle Feb. 12, 1998: 1-2

Drinking patterns established in high school often persist during college. Compared to other students, college students who were binge drinkers in high school were almost three times more likely to be binge drinkers in college.

Mei, Linda. "Binge." Newsweek Sep. 15, 1993:53-7

Of all the statistics gathered, suprisingly there really isn't a very big difference between the men and the women as noted by Jay Carpenter (Figure 1).

Dubow, Josh. "Colleges Target Binge Drinking." ABC News Dec. 7, 1998: 10-19

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Approximate Word count = 1970
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)