The perception that most high school kids drink alcoholic beverages isn’t true, the Minnesota Department of Health reports. And it’s less true now — much less true — than it was at the beginning of the century.
“Youth drinking has consequences. It’s associated with troubles later in life and a host of bad outcomes in high school, such as mental health troubles, fights, risky sexual behavior and poor academic achievement,” state Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said on Thursday in a statement accompanying the release of a Health Department analysis of the latest data on teen drinking in the state.
“It’s important that kids know that contrary to public belief, a majority of high school students don’t drink alcohol.”
For example, among Minnesota’s ninth-graders:
- The percentage of students reporting current alcohol use dropped from 30.4 in 2001 to 11.2 in 2016.
- The percentage of students who said they started drinking before age 13 dropped from 19.8 in 2007 to 12.3 in 2016.
- The percentage of students who admitted to binge drinking dropped from 6.9 in 2013 to 4.4 in 2016.
The analysis was drawn from the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey, which surveyed students in fifth, eighth, ninth and 11th grades.
Minnesota has a lower youth drinking rate than the nation and surrounding states, according to the Health Department’s analysis. But some students are more at risk than others for drinking alcohol as teens, it said.
For example, white and Hispanic students have higher alcohol use rates than African-Americans and Asians, and Native Americans have higher rates still. Students with “protective factors,” such as an adult to talk to and the absence of childhood trauma, were significantly less likely to report problem drinking.
It also shows a relationship between teen drinking and mental health issues.
Thirty-eight percent of students who began drinking before age 13 said they had considered suicide, compared with 19 percent who waited until at least that age to start. Also, 41 percent of teens who admitted binge drinking within the previous 30 days had considered suicide, compared with 18 percent of those who hadn’t engaged in binge drinking.