Adults often supply underage drinkers: study

By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More than 40 percent of the nation's 10.8 million underage drinkers got their alcohol free from adults -- and many got it from their own parents, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

Up to 650,000 youths and underage adults were given alcoholic beverages by their parents or guardians in the past month, they said.

Congress effectively raised the U.S. legal drinking age to 21 in 1984 when it passed a measure that threatened to take highway funding away from states that did not comply.

Acting Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson said parents enable underage drinking far too often.

"Many parents don't realize how risky drinking alcohol can be for kids. There are 5,000 people under the age of 21 who die every year related to alcohol. That is a really disturbing number of people," Galson said in a telephone interview.

"Alcohol use is related to many, many types of injuries," he said, including sexual assault, falls, automobile accidents and increased rates of suicides and homicides.

Galson said underage drinking has remained fairly stable from year to year, so "the bottom line is that the problem is not going away."

The report by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that 3.5 million underage drinkers each year abuse or are addicted to alcohol.