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 In the News
11.September.08
Inside Higher Ed
The Wrong Idea on the Drinking Problem
The late Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University professor who famously gave “The Last Lecture” on September 7, 2007, describes in that talk a sports metaphor called “The Head Fake.” Athletes use the head fake to mislead their opponents into heading one direction, while they run the other way. In life, a head fake is when we lead people to one conclusion about our goals while trying to head in another direction.
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08.September.08
The New York Times
Curbing Binge Drinking Takes Group Effort
Of all the advice parents give to children heading off to college, warnings about alcohol — and especially about abusing alcohol — may be the most important. At most colleges, whether and how much students drink can make an enormous difference, not just in how well they do in school, but even whether they live or die.
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11.August.08
University of Virginia Today
New Study Shows Reductions in Serious Alcohol-Related Consequences Among College Students
A new six-year study conducted at the University of Virginia has found that exposing college students to information that corrected misperceptions about campus drinking patterns resulted in dramatic reductions in alcohol-related negative consequences. The study is reported in the July-August edition of the Journal of American College Health by Dr. James Turner, executive director of student health at U.Va.; Jennifer Bauerle, director of the National Social Norms Institute at U.Va., and H. Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
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08.August.08
Medical News Today
New Research Finds Adolescent Drinkers and Drug Users Die Younger
Adolescent substance abuse disorders are a predictor of young adult mortality, new research from the University of Pittsburgh concludes. Researchers found that young adult males with substance abuse disorders had a mortality rate far in excess of the norm for their non-addicted contemporaries. For example, 2 percent of the adolescents studied had died by the time the eight-year study period ended, including 23 percent of the African American males in the study.
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07.August.08
Forbes
NCAA can't do much about beer ads, fantasy sports
Beer ads will continue to pay for college sports telecasts, and college fantasy leagues could become the next real moneymaker on Web sites. On Thursday, the NCAA's executive committee decided it couldn't eliminate alcohol advertising nor stop the incorporation of college sports into the fantasy games and decided, essentially, to retain the status quo.
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02.August.08
The Gainesville Sun
Tavis J. Glassman: Collaboration is the key to combatting binge drinking
Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration! After leaving my position as Coordinator of Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention at the University of Florida I began to reflect about the successes and challenges of past and present. The following includes UF's and the community's greatest prevention accomplishments concerning alcohol abuse, listed in no particular order, since I arrived in the spring of 2000:
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19.July.08
Appleton Post-Crescent
Drinking tradition runs deep
Doug Weigman can name everybody who crowds into Pine Street Bar on Friday nights. There’s a family atmosphere at the downtown tavern. Weigman, 37, has tended bar there once a week for the past six or seven years — not only to make extra money (up to $300 in tips) but also to mingle with friends.
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18.July.08
U.S. News & World Report
Research Finds Causal Link Between Ending Drinking, Depression
Giving up your few drinks a day may lead to health issues, including depression, a new study says. "Our research in an animal model establishes a causal link between abstinence from alcohol drinking and depression," study senior author Clyde W. Hodge, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said in a UNC news release. "In mice that voluntarily drank alcohol for 28 days, depression-like behavior was evident 14 days after termination of alcohol drinking. This suggests that people who stop drinking may experience negative mood states days or weeks after the alcohol has cleared their systems."
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13.July.08
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
University of Wisconsin-Madison donates ID scanners to businesses
Anyone under the age of 21 looking to buy alcohol in downtown Madison could soon find it a little tougher to pass off a fake ID. To combat underage drinking, the University of Wisconsin-Madison used donated funds to buy hand-held scanners — at $1,000 each — and give them at no cost to seven liquor stores and one grocery store. The businesses, in turn, agreed to use the gadgets to swipe customers’ IDs to instantly determine whether they are of age or using a fake.
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02.May.08
The Daily Collegian
Studies track different students' drinking habits
Two recent studies, one from Penn State and one nationwide, found seemingly conflicting results about students' drinking habits. Last week, Penn State Pulse released a student drinking survey of a random sample of undergraduate students at University Park. According to the Pulse survey, 58.2 percent of students 21 and older reported high-risk drinking, as opposed to 48.9 percent of students under 21.
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30.April.08
Washington Post
Drinking Dampens Ability to Feel Fear
Alcohol can make people frisky, chatty and, as any bouncer knows, feisty. Now, a new brain scan study shows drinking actually dampens the biological ability to feel fear. When people drink, these lowered fear levels can lead to liquor-fueled courage that can ultimately make people more aggressive, explained study co-author Dr. Daniel Hommer.
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29.April.08
The Ledger
Study Finds 2 in 5 College Students Binge Drink
Thinking back to that night three years ago, Harrison Palmer can't remember exactly how much he drank. Only 18 years old and in the middle of his first semester at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Palmer slid behind the wheel of his Chevrolet Tahoe. He and his lifelong friend - his best friend - had been partying around Wilmington. And the two were driving through a quiet neighborhood. Suddenly everything changed.
Police would later determine Palmer had a blood alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit of .08 percent when his SUV hit a speed bump at 63 mph, went airborne and rolled over.
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12.April.08
Daily Herald
College presidents: Athletes, alcohol just don't mix
Beer and college basketball don't mix, some college officials say. More than 100 college presidents and athletic directors-- including Wheaton College athletic director Tony Ladd -- wrote a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand last week calling beer advertising "embarrassingly prominent" during this year's March Madness tournament broadcasts.
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08.April.08
The New York Times
Drinking to Extremes to Celebrate 21
The ritual of drinking 21 or more alcoholic beverages to celebrate the 21st birthday appears to be far more common than expected, according to new research. It’s estimated that more than four out of every five American 21-year-olds drink alcohol to celebrate the birthday milestone, which is the the legal drinking age in the United States. But a new study from University of Missouri researchers of 2,518 students shows that many young adults aren’t just drinking to celebrate — they are drinking to extremes.
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05.April.08
Miami Herald
Beer Pong is going mainstream, bringing worries of binge drinking
Ahead by 10, with what seemed like an insurmountable lead, Brad Sommerville, 22, and Jason Bruce, 22, started missing like baseball pitchers who couldn't hit the catcher's mitt. One at a time, each stepped to the end of a blue Ping-Pong table, squeezed a three-gram white ball between thumb and index finger and tossed it at a 2-foot-high pyramid of blue plastic cups on the opposite end of the table, every one filled one-third of the way up with Natural Light Beer.
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01.April.08
Washington Post
Federal Judge Rules College Alcohol-Ad Ban Violates Free Speech
A federal judge has overturned Virginia's decades-old ban on alcohol-related advertising in college newspapers, saying that the law violates the student publications' constitutional right to free speech. U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck sided with the student newspapers at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, which said the restrictions on alcohol references -- including phrases such as "happy hour" -- in print and online media hampered their ability to make money because they've had to turn down potential advertisers.
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26.March.08
The New York Times
Can Sips at Home Prevent Binges?
Parents always want to share their passions with their children. Whether you’re a fan of baseball or the blues, sailing or tinkering with old cars, few things are as rewarding as seeing a spark of receptivity in the eyes of the next generation.
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28.February.08
Newark Advocate
Acting Surgeon General: Education about alcohol use needed at colleges
Acting U.S. Surgeon General Steven Galson spoke to leaders from a contingent of Ohio colleges Wednesday at Denison University, discussing ways to reduce and prevent alcohol abuse on campus. "Education is the key," Galson said. "The acceptance of (alcohol abuse) as a normal right of passage will only be reduced with acceptance of the dangers."
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29.January.08
Fresno Bee
Liquor, lectures won't mix
Forty professors at Fresno State have taken a pledge about booze -- not to abstain, but to watch what they say in classrooms about drinking. They believe even casual comment could influence students' alcohol habits, a pledge organizer said. But one skeptical professor said a pledge by instructors to limit their speech in class raises questions about academic freedom.
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28.January.08
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Deadly drinking incidents hide hopeful trends
This spring, students at the University of Minnesota are going to get a postcard in the mail telling them that Fred is Dead. Who's Fred? Fred is anyone who dies from acute alcohol poisoning because no one around him called 911 after he passed out.
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25.January.08
Wisconsin State Journal
Control drinking Downtown, report urges
Madison and UW-Madison officials took a wait-and-see approach Thursday to a report by a Downtown neighborhood association that -- among other things -- calls for a crackdown on underage drinking, higher drink prices and fewer bars to stop alcohol-related crime in the central city.
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22.January.08
Washington Post
Alcohol Labeling Proposal Sets Off a Brawl
After more than 30 years of deliberation, federal regulators have proposed requiring the alcoholic-beverage industry to put nutrition and alcohol-content labels on their containers, setting off the equivalent of a barroom brawl among makers of beer, wine and liquor.
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14.January.08
St. Could Times
Binge drinking among students remains high
For some young people, it's a rite of passage. They spend their weekends drinking copious amounts of alcohol and spend the weekdays sharing war stories about how sick they got. But with four recent alcohol-related deaths of college-aged Minnesotans, new concerns have arisen about whether the youth drinking culture is getting worse.
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11.January.08
Wisconsin State Journal
Fake IDs are big business, big trouble
"Luke" put on his favorite shirt and cologne, wet his hair back and removed his driver's license from his wallet on a Friday night at the end of summer. He met up with a few friends and walked to a nearby bar to have a few drinks before the fall semester at UW-Madison began.
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04.January.08
New York Times
Kids Sip Alcohol Early
Nearly half of 10-year-olds may have tasted alcohol, although many of their parents don’t know about it, a new study shows. The findings, published in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, are among the first to track experimental tasting of alcohol by young children. Most studies look at whether children have taken more than just sips and have actually consumed alcoholic beverages.
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29.December.07
New York Times
The Hangover That Lasts
New Year’s Eve tends to be the day of the year with the most binge drinking (based on drunken driving fatalities), followed closely by Super Bowl Sunday. Likewise, colleges have come to expect that the most alcohol-filled day of their students’ lives is their 21st birthday. So, some words of caution for those who continue to binge and even for those who have stopped: just as the news is not so great for former cigarette smokers, there is equally bad news for recovering binge-drinkers who have achieved a sobriety that has lasted years. The more we have binged — and the younger we have started to binge — the more we experience significant, though often subtle, effects on the brain and cognition.
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18.December.07
USA Today
'Pre-partying' can kick off a big night of boozing
College binge drinking has been on the public health radar for years, but new research sheds light on the extent of the problem on campuses today — especially "pre-partying," participating in heavy, rapid drinking before attending a real party where the drinking continues.
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06.December.07
The Wall Street Journal
Colleges Move Boldly
On Student Drinking
When Mindy and Tom Gunn sent their son away to college this fall, they expected the school to send them a bill. They didn't expect a letter saying he'd been caught drinking. But two weeks after their son John enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the school notified them that the 18-year-old had violated the campus drinking policy. The letter encouraged his parents to talk to him about it. And it invited them to call a school official if they had questions.
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01.December.07
La Crosse Tribune
Study: UW binge drinking down slightly but above national average
A new study says binge drinking among University of Wisconsin System students has declined slightly but remains higher than the national average.
The survey found that 54 percent of UW students admitted binge drinking at least once in the last two weeks.
That’s down from 59 percent two years ago but above the national average of 44 percent.
The survey defined binge drinking as consuming five or more alcoholic beverages in one sitting.
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01.December.07
Athletic Business
U Tube
It seemed reasonable enough. Students who vomit, fall down or otherwise draw attention to themselves inside Camp Randall Stadium as a result of excessive alcohol consumption forfeit the privilege of attending future University of Wisconsin football games.
That was nearly the policy that the UW Dean of Students Office put in place years ago to help curb the binge drinking and rowdy behavior that have become synonymous with Badger Saturdays in Madison. "A game ticket is a license that can be revoked, and our initial idea was to just revoke the season tickets of those students who get kicked out," says assistant dean of students Ervin Cox. "Then we thought, 'Let's not do that. Let's give them the chance to still come, but they have to come sober.' "
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03.October.07
Stateline.org
Colleges Go On Offense Against Binge Drinking
To many college students, binge drinking and everything that goes with it – beer pong, keg stands and $1 shots – are a rite of passage, as integral a part of the college experience as midterms and all-nighters. But to college administrators, drinking too much is a hazard to students’ health and safety. As a result, officials are addressing excessive drinking with tactics such as moving classes to Friday to prevent “Thirsty Thursdays,” convincing nearby communities to limit drink specials like ladies’ night, and requiring incoming students to take online classes about alcohol use.
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19.September.07
Badger Herald
City Council Approves Downtown "Bar Ban"
University of Wisconsin students won ’t be seeing any new bars downtown in the near future, as the Madison City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday night that will prohibit new liquor licenses from being granted in the downtown area.
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19.September.07
Daily Cardinal
Council Approves Density Plan
The Madison City Council voted 13-6 Tuesday night to approve the proposed Alcohol License Density Plan. The density plan has been in the works for months, and now that it has passed it will ultimately limit the number of new alcohol-licensed establishments allowed to open in a specific section of the entertainment district downtown.
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19.September.07
NBC 15 - WMTV, Madison
Limiting Liquor Licenses
Cutting down the number of alcohol related crimes in Madison. That was the motive behind Tuesday night's Common Council meeting as the group voted on an alcohol density plan. At the meeting, downtown residents explained how alcohol has negatively their quality of living downtown, but those in opposition say an alcohol density plan will make matters worse.
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19.September.07
Badger Herald
Bingeing Plagues State
Wisconsin ranks as the most prolific alcohol consumer in the nation, despite falling from The Princeton Review’s party school rankings earlier this year. A report released by the UW Population Health Institute found Wisconsin has the highest rates in the nation of drinking among high school students, underage teenagers and adults.
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17.September.07
Green Bay Press-Gazette
Report: State leads nation in underage drinking
When he gives lectures on how alcohol harms Wisconsin communities, Dr. Paul Moberg starts by showing an editorial cartoon he calls "sobering." The 1994 cartoon by Green Bay Press-Gazette cartoonist Joe Heller shows University of Wisconsin-Madison mascot Bucky Badger in front of a blackboard bearing a series of ignominious state rankings: Wisconsin leads the nation in binge drinking and in percentage of adult drinkers.
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13.September.07
Badger Herald
Drinking Policies Garner Attention
It’s no secret that underage alcohol consumption is a major issue at the University of Wisconsin, but instead of the issue being glamorized as it has in the past, UW is being applauded for its approach in curbing the problem. The New York Times ran an article Wednesday about the UW administration’s techniques for handling alcohol violations, including parental involvement and notification.
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31.August.07
The Badger Herald
Wisconsin drops from party ranks
Only two years after being named the top party school in the nation, the University of Wisconsin has fallen out of the Princeton Review’s top 20 party schools rankings altogether. University officials expressed satisfaction with the results and said the rankings have no effect on academics, calling the rankings deceiving and unscientific.
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30.August.07
The Isthmus
Drier Education
When bad things happen to drunk students, no doubt there are many who shiver and think: It could have been me. Who hasn't been so sloshed at bar time that the trip home was a little hazy? Who hasn't made at least one really stupid choice while drunk? Well, Vicki Nickolaisen, for one. The UW junior is one of roughly 3,700 UW students who do not drink at all. Nickolaisen goes to parties with friends who don't drink and watches for the moment when "things start to get crazy," as she puts it. Then she leaves, with her sober friends.
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30.August.07
The Capital Times
UW trying to get alcohol message across
As a new school year begins, University of Wisconsin officials are launching an effort to make students realize how dangerous alcohol can be. "This is a messaging campaign aimed at incoming freshmen, primarily in the UW Housing dorms," said Susan Crowley, director of prevention services at University Health Services at UW-Madison.
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29.August.07
The Capital Times
County's detox center prepares for football season, too
It is not just students, teachers and coaches who gear up for the school year and football weekends. Detox does too. "We know we will have an increased number on football weekends. We're prepared. We have to be," said Melody Music-Twilla, who runs the Dane County Detox Center on Industrial Drive on Madison's southeast side for Tellurian Ucan, Inc.
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23.August.07
USA Today
Alcohol-saturated 'fun' on campus can be lethal
As students head to the nation's college campuses, relishing their new independence, criminal prosecutions in the deaths of two young men are a sober reminder of how quickly alcohol-fueled "fun" can spin out of control. Charges were filed this month against students and administrators linked to the recent fire death of a 19-year-old sophomore at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., and the alcohol poisoning of a 18-year-old freshman at Rider University in Trenton, N.J.
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10.August.07
The Capital Times
Cops Push Limit On Bars
Police say limiting the number of downtown liquor licenses would reduce crime and prevent a bar-time drain of police resources from other parts of the city, but not all City Council members agree. Nearly half of the council met Thursday night with police and other city officials for a discussion of the proposed downtown Alcohol Beverage License Density Plan. The council is slated to consider the plan next month.
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08.August.07
The Isthmus
Drinking and riding:
Do alcohol ads belong on city buses?
Kevin Hinckley stood on Capitol Square last week, collecting signatures. The east-side Madison resident has started a petition asking the city to stop accepting alcohol and gambling advertising on Metro buses.
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26.July.07
Reuters
Phone a 'friend' to stop drinking
A few phone conversations with a counsellor might help patients, who abuse or who are dependent on alcohol, cut back on their drinking, at least in the short term, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that after just six telephone sessions with a counselor, men and women with alcohol problems were able to reduce their drinking.
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27.June.07
USA Today
Early class Friday? More sober Thursday, study finds
College students kick their weekends off early by drinking more alcohol on Thursday nights when they don't have Friday classes before 10 a.m., a study shows.
The study, published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found that the later their classes started on Friday, the more college students drank on Thursday nights. Students with a 9 a.m. Friday class drank an average of 1.39 drinks on Thursday night, while students who did not have class on Friday drank an average of 2.41 drinks.
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01.Jan.07
The New York Times
This Remaking of Downtown Has Downside
MADISON, Wis. — This college town received what it wanted when, during the 1980s and 90s, it sought to reverse the decline of its downtown and to create a more vibrant civic center that would draw people at night and on weekends.
Since then, thousands of young professionals, retirees and former suburbanites have moved to glistening condominium buildings in the shadow of the state Capitol’s dome and only a few blocks from the University of Wisconsin’s main campus. And there is hardly a bad night for business near State Street, where university students and tourists pack restaurants and bars to capacity even on freezing weeknights.
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27.July.05
Center for Science in the Public Interest
NCAA Recruiting Young Audience for Beer Ads
CSPI Says Alcohol Advertising Incompatible with Outreach Efforts that Target Kids
as Young as 6
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is actively building brand
loyalty among young people in order to get them interested in sports and to boost
the attractiveness of NCAA telecasts to advertisers. But those recruitment efforts
may deliver more and more young viewers to Anheuser-Busch and other beer marketers
which advertise heavily on college sports. In a report released today, the Center
for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), which has been waging a Campaign for Alcohol-Free
Sports TV, said the NCAA’s otherwise-admirable youth outreach efforts should
continue, but the beer ads on its telecasts should not.
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17.July.05
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
Drinking age still debated
20 years ago, law made it 21
by Raquel Rutledge
Two decades ago, few in the booze business believed it would happen here, in the
beer capital of the world. While other, more sober states caved in to the federal
government's order to raise their drinking ages to 21 or lose a portion of highway
funds, Wisconsin — insulated by the thick biceps of the Tavern League — would not
be easily blackmailed. It was 1985. Debate swirled. Would the economic loss from
cutting 19- and 20-year-olds out of the legal drinking equation outweigh highway
withholdings? Would bumping up the age cut teen traffic deaths and eliminate the
“blood borders” — the
so-called stretches of highway where teens from other states with higher drinking
ages sometimes crashed and died driving home after a night of drinking in Wisconsin?
Twenty years after Wisconsin acquiesced, like every other state, the drinking age
is still hotly debated.
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5.July.04
Lacrosse Tribune
Our view: The real problem is extreme intoxication
Opinion page
Two things stood out in Tribune reporter Terry
Rindfleisch’s story Sunday about binge drinking. First were the anecdotes
from very drunk students trying to get home but going in wrong directions. One
22-year-old man was staggering north on Copeland Avenue, looking for his University
of Wisconsin–La Crosse dormitory. Another 22-year-old man was so drunk that he
literally could not stand up. He couldn’t remember his address and actually
thought he was still in St. Cloud, Minn. If you talk to police officers, medical
professionals and college officials, you will find out that those stories are all
too typical.
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10.Mar.04
PACE News Release
PACE: Serious Alcohol-Related Crime Increases
A voluntary effort by downtown bars to limit drink specials on Friday and
Saturday nights has been inconclusive and serious alcohol-related crime continues
to rise. The findings come from a new analysis of downtown police calls in Madison
from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s PACE Coalition. The group
conducted the study as part of an evaluation of a 2002 Tavern League voluntary limit
on drink specials after 8 pm on Friday and Saturday nights.
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12.Nov.03
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Coaching Legends Help Launch “Alcohol-Free Sports
TV” Effort
71 Percent Want Colleges to Dump Beer Ads
Former University of North Carolina head basketball coach Dean Smith and former
University of Nebraska head football coach (and current U.S. Representative) Tom
Osborne (R-NE) today helped launch a nationwide campaign to rid televised college
sports of alcohol advertising. Smith, Osborne, and the nonprofit Center for Science
in the Public Interest (CSPI) today said they would call on colleges and universities,
athletic conferences, and the NCAA to stop taking money from alcohol advertisers
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Fall.03
Special Higher Education edition of Prevention
File
Q & A with John D. Wiley
The chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison speaks out
Q: As provost and now chancellor, you have been leading the effort to
curb high-risk drinking among your students. What made you decide to speak out
on this issue? A: It was a combination of things. We had one
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grants to address high-risk drinking among
our students
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Find out more about what UW–Madison is doing to address high-risk drinking on
campus by visiting Chancellor John Wiley’s 