It turns out that a reasonable, factually based program that in many ways is remarkably like "harm reduction" works better than zero tolerance.

The alcohol industry should stop supporting marijuana prohibition and wake up to the fact that the same mechanism that drives one authoritarian program is busy at work on them.)

October 12, 1998
From Chicago Tribune
tribletter@aol.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
By Michael Haines, coordinator of health-enhancement services at Northern Illinois University.

MEDIA BINGE DISTORTS CAMPUS DRINKING

The media missed the big story on college campuses across the country last month.

It was right there under their noses, but it got washed away by the release of the latest study of drinking behavior at colleges and universities. In the wake of that study, headlines blared: "Students majoring in drunkenness 101," and "Hitting the bar, not the books," painting a bleak picture of colleges across the country.

Admittedly, the numbers behind those headlines are cause for concern. That drinking on college campuses is a problem is without question.

However, overlooked amid all the hand-wringing and alarm caused by the study was an important bit of good news: A majority of students—more than 60 percent—do not engage in binge drinking.

In fact, it would have been equally accurate for the media to have reported: "College student binge drinking hits record low," or "College student use of alcohol hits all-time low."

Both statements are true, according to the latest data available from an ongoing study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Their research shows that binge drinking reached its highest point in 1986 at 45 percent, and it has declined every year since 1992, dipping to about 37 percent in 1997.

(Ed. note: 1992 also happens to be the year that reported marijuana use started going up. Mmmm…)

At the same time, the number of students reporting that they do not use alcohol has increased for six straight years, topping out at 17 percent in 1997, an all-time high for the study, according to NIDA.

Such information isn’t as eye-catching, however, as that splashed on front pages across the country last month. It also isn’t nearly as useful to politicians looking to scare up votes by jumping on the issue, or to those who treat college drinking—too much success can be bad for a budget.

This fascination with the negative side of the college drinking equation, however, is doing nothing to improve the situation. In fact, it contributes to the problem. Proclaiming to the world that the nation’s campuses are awash in alcohol reinforces the popular—but wrong—stereotype that the typical college experience is a scene straight out of "Animal House." It reinforces such behavior by creating the mistaken notion that "everyone is doing it."

At Northern Illinois University we made a choice 10 years ago to abandon scare tactics and hardnosed bans.

Instead, we developed a mass media campaign to let our students know that, of their peers who choose to drink, most do so responsibly. We have highlighted the fact that drinking in moderation (if at all) is the norm, and that those who engage in binge drinking are actually in the minority.

How well has it worked? Over the last 10 years, while binge drinking nationwide has declined 12 percent, at Northern Illinois University we have seen a decline of 44 percent. As other schools embrace what has become known as "The NIU Model," that success has been duplicated. The University of Arizona has seen a 26 percent reduction in binge drinking over the past three years; Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., have seen a decrease of 12 percent over two years, and Western Washington University recorded an 8 percent decline over the past year.

(Ed. note: Are they implicitly condoning an illegal activity? Remember "zero tolerance?" What they are doing is recognizing that there is a difference between use and abuse. Of course, this flies in the face of prohibitionist orthodoxy. Also, according to the Drug Czar alcohol is a "gateway drug," so if these "children" could be kept from using alcohol before they are 21, they would be statistically unlikely to use cocaine. In this context, it is obvious that this is non-sense. If the topic were moderate and responsible marijuana use, the "NIU Model" would draw outraged responses.)

Encouraged by those results, the state of Kansas recently announced that it will spend $1.5 million to implement the program at three of its universities next year, and the state of Montana is launching a pilot program that will employ a similar approach to curb drunk driving among young adults.

We are not naive enough to believe that the NIU model will solve all of the drinking problems on every campus. However, it does appear to be working better than the traditional methods used to little effect at so many schools, and certainly better than the hardline crackdowns that led to rioting on some campuses last year.

Sadly, last month’s headlines are likely to stimulate more of the same old behavior, despite the long history of failure associated with those methods.