Miller Ted R, Levy David T, Spicer Rebecca S, Taylor Dexter M
Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, 11710 Beltsville Drive, Suite 125, Calverton, Maryland 20705-3102, USA.
J Stud Alcohol. 2006 Jul;67(4):519-28. doi: 10.15288/jsa.2006.67.519.
Despite minimum-purchase-age laws, young people regularly drink alcohol. This study estimated the magnitude and costs of problems resulting from underage drinking by category-traffic crashes, violence, property crime, suicide, burns, drownings, fetal alcohol syndrome, high-risk sex, poisonings, psychoses, and dependency treatment-and compared those costs with associated alcohol sales. Previous studies did not break out costs of alcohol problems by age.
For each category of alcohol-related problems, we estimated fatal and nonfatal cases attributable to underage alcohol use. We multiplied alcohol-attributable cases by estimated costs per case to obtain total costs for each problem.
Underage drinking accounted for at least 16% of alcohol sales in 2001. It led to 3,170 deaths and 2.6 million other harmful events. The estimated $61.9 billion bill (relative SE = 18.5%) included $5.4 billion in medical costs, $14.9 billion in work loss and other resource costs, and $41.6 billion in lost quality of life. Quality-of-life costs, which accounted for 67% of total costs, required challenging indirect measurement. Alcohol-attributable violence and traffic crashes dominated the costs. Leaving aside quality of life, the societal harm of $1 per drink consumed by an underage drinker exceeded the average purchase price of $0.90 or the associated $0.10 in tax revenues.
Recent attention has focused on problems resulting from youth use of illicit drugs and tobacco. In light of the associated substantial injuries, deaths, and high costs to society, youth drinking behaviors merit the same kind of serious attention.
尽管有最低饮酒年龄法律，但年轻人仍经常饮酒。本研究按类别估计了未成年饮酒导致的问题的严重程度和成本——交通事故、暴力、财产犯罪、自杀、烧伤、溺水、胎儿酒精综合征、高危性行为、中毒、精神病以及成瘾治疗——并将这些成本与相关酒精销售额进行了比较。以往的研究并未按年龄划分酒精问题的成本。
对于每一类与酒精相关的问题，我们估计了可归因于未成年饮酒的致命和非致命案例。我们将酒精归因案例乘以每个案例的估计成本，以获得每个问题的总成本。
2001年，未成年饮酒至少占酒精销售额的16%。它导致了3170人死亡和260万起其他有害事件。估计619亿美元的账单（相对标准误 = 18.5%）包括54亿美元的医疗成本、149亿美元的工作损失和其他资源成本，以及416亿美元的生活质量损失。生活质量成本占总成本的67%，需要进行具有挑战性的间接测量。酒精导致的暴力和交通事故占成本的主导地位。抛开生活质量不谈，未成年饮酒者每饮用一杯酒对社会造成的危害超过了平均购买价格0.90美元或相关税收收入0.10美元。
最近的关注焦点集中在青少年使用非法药物和烟草所导致的问题上。鉴于相关的大量伤害、死亡以及对社会造成的高昂成本，青少年饮酒行为同样值得认真关注。
