According to a report in the Annapolis Capital-Gazette, 22 teens, aged 14 to 17, were charged as juveniles with underage drinking at a home in Severna Park, Md., Saturday.
A police spokesman told the paper the department had received three reports of underage drinking at the same house in the last four months. The teenagers were reportedly detained at the home until their parents could pick them up, since they were intoxicated.
Maryland law allows consumption of alcohol by people under 21, provided the consumption takes place in a private residence (or “within the curtilage of the residence”) and a parent or guardian of the drinker is present (source). Laws in other states are different.
Although circumstances may make underage drinking legal, alcohol use by adolescents is declining across the country. The pace of the decline, however, is a little slow. In January, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration released data that showed the percentage of adolescents aged 12 to 17 who thought having five or more alcoholic drinks once or twice a week was risky increased from 38.2 percent in 2002 to 40.7 percent in 2011; during the same period, the rate of binge alcohol use among adolescents decreased from 10.7 to 7.4 percent.
Less binge drinking among teens with college plans
The rate of alcohol abuse by 12th graders also appears to correlate with plans for college: the percentage of binge drinkers among seniors with college plans has been about 5 to 10 points below that among seniors who have no college plans for at least 20 years.
This is not an easy trend to understand, though, since there are more binge drinkers among college students than there are among people of the same age who are not attending college. College life itself might have something to do with promoting underage binge drinking.
