Binge Drinking - Research Paper Example

Morawska, 2004). Binge drinking is more popular to student and college goers than to their peers who do not experience university life(T.P.S. Oei, A. Morawska, 2004). As a consequence, binge drinking is defined as the biggest problem with American university students. It is also associated with "unplanned and unsafe sex, assault and aggressive behavior, serious injury as a result of vehicle accidents, various social and psychological problems"(Weschler, Dowdall, Davenport, & Castillo, 1995 cited in T.P.S. Oei, A. Morawska, 2004) as well as dangerous driving.

As the most major benefit of drinking, youngsters identify sociability. Another consequent aspect of alcohol consumption is taking drugs. Cannabis and other illicit drugs like LSD, amphetamine, ecstasy and magic mushrooms are considered to be the most common amongst UK. (E Webb, C H Ashton, P Kelly, F Kamali, 1993-94). The main finding of same survey suggests that university students across the UK drink above their limits, combine alcohol with smoking, cannabis and other drugs and therefore occurs a need for better understanding and education on binge drinking.

Various factors stay behind the motives of college and university goers for their alcoholic behavior . Despite some differences between British university and secondary school students, a conclusion drawn by W.M. Cox et al. is that negative reasons for drinking-related problems exceed positive ones. Moreover, alcohol drinking and negative reasons with secondary students predetermined their alcohol-related problems than the positive reasons for drinking. As for university students, again negative reasons prevail over either the amount of liquors consumed or the positive drinking motives(W.M. Cox Steven G.

Hosier, Sophie Crossley, Becky Kendall, Katherine L. Roberts, 2006). Studying the age group more likely to binge drink, results show that "mature adults appear to make alcohol associations with negative behavioral outcomes that young adults did not make. These appear to be in addition to the alcohol associations that young adults did make. Thus, there appears to be a widening of such alcohol associations with negative outcomes in mature adults" (L. Gadon et al., p.1383)Binge drinking is popular not only amongst UK college and university youngsters but with other Western countries students as well.

For instance, the average percent of binge drinking students in Germany is 40%( S. Keller et al. 2007). The figure corresponds to some extent to the surveys in Britain - 24-64% in males, 14-63% in females(Gill, 2002 cited in S.Keller et al.2007). However, due to different definitions, further comparisons with British students is a serious challenge. We can only add that the figures with British drinking students are slightly lower compared to these in Germany. Statistics are very alarming for Italy as well. M. D'Alessio et al.

's survey(2006) suggests that starting age for binge drinking is 13 with its peak from 18 to 22 years of age, whereas the average figure for binge drinking amongst Italian students is 32.9% with males dominating the females. The Italian studies also focus on the fact that students who live on their