Alcohol takes its toll on Europe's youth.

Abstract

Whether it is drinks or drugs -- getting high seems to be increasingly popular among European teenagers. In most European countries, today's 16-year-olds consume more alcohol, cannabis and other drugs than ever. And they're paying a price. Alcohol is to blame for one in four deaths of young European men aged 15 to 29. These bleak findings were presented in late February at the European Ministerial Conference on Young People and Alcohol in Stockholm, where WHO and the Swedish government had convened European health ministers, other high-ranking decision-makers and young citizens from 51 European countries to discuss the impact of alcohol and drugs on the health of Europe's coming generations -- and to sketch out a region-wide action plan to keep them "safe and dry." Concerted measures are necessary, says Dr Cees Goos, the coordinator of WHO's Alcohol, Drugs and Tobacco Unit in Copenhagen, because "the alcohol industry is out to aggressively infiltrate their future market. They're sponsoring fun events, they put their banners on web pages, they're trying everything to get at young people." And they seem to be getting results, if the findings of the 1999 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD), which were presented in Stockholm, are anything to go by. Conducted by the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN), the ESPAD project collects data by questionnaire survey on alcohol, tobacco and drug use among 15-16-year-old high school students in 30 European countries. Altogether, nearly 100 000 students participated in the 1999 survey. According to the report, binge drinking, that is, having five or more drinks in a row, has increased by 21% to 55% in almost half of the countries; heading the list is Slovenia, where the number of binge drinkers has more than tripled. As in 1995, when the first ESPAD was conducted, alcohol use among youngsters is still most prevalent in Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom, where between 36% and 51% of the teenagers had imbibed alcohol 20 times or more within the last 12 months. Not surprisingly the frequency of drunkenness has also increased. Among the countries with the highest alcohol intoxication rates, the proportion of 16-year-olds who were drunk three times or more within the last 30 days rose from 21% to 30% in Denmark and from 15% to 24% in Ireland, while rates in Finland and the United Kingdom remained largely unchanged at about 18% and 24%. What's more, illicit drug use also rose by 20-400% in the 30 countries as a whole. …