Stanford's New Alcohol Policy Isn't Based On Much Research (vice.com) 201
Sophia Carter-Kahn, reporting for Motherboard: Last week Stanford University announced a strict new alcohol policy in hopes to curb binge drinking. The new policy bans hard liquor at on-campus parties, and restricts hard alcohol in undergraduate possession to containers smaller than 750 milliliters ("a fifth"). Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital]. Universities across the country are looking for new ways to deal with dangerous binge drinking. If this new restriction at Stanford is successful, it would set a precedent for how universities across the country grapple with a seemingly insurmountable alcohol problem. There's just one catch: there's little data to suggest restricting bottle size can change college drinking culture. Colleges have tried different strategies, from mailing parents flyers about alcoholism stats to policing campuses to break up parties. Dartmouth College, for example, implemented a hard alcohol ban last year. And the University of Virginia cracked down on liquor and Greek life on campus. But their efforts don't seem to be working. Drunkorexia -- skipping meals to have more room for alcohol -- is on the rise. And administrative desperation to find some way to reduce alcohol consumption has continued.
Culture (Score:3, Insightful)
Change culture, not containers.
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Change culture, not containers.
If it were so easy!
People are irrational, short sighted, and overconfident in their ability to be rational.
Now add in the mix a culture that rewards overconfidence, even arrogance, and you have the makings of really crazy behavior.
And I'm talking about society in general - not just Stanford.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
"there ought to be a law"
And it was so. And the law didn't change a thing, just made nominal activity illegal. And yet, we continue to listen to the logic ...
1) We have to do something
2) This is something (there ought to be a law)
3) Therefore we must do it!
Careful consideration and thoughtful deliberations are being shunned for vain emotional arguments
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There aught to be a law, where people that say 'There aught to be a law" get kicked in the nu.. *WHOMPF*
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Laws do not stop things from happening, that is impossible. Laws only slow them down, so depending upon the impact of the act that you want to reduce not eliminate the number of occurrences and based upon the social impact of that act, you apply a reasonable penalty or rehabilitative act for carrying out that act or even attempting to do so.
To repeat for the stubborn, laws do not prevent crimes, they simply reduce the number and the impact of the law should never be greater than the impact of the crime ie
Re:Culture (Score:4, Informative)
Cite me not the self-congratulatory statistics from MADD.
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Actually - if colleges had the leeway, I think it could be that easy.
College bans all alcohol everywhere on campus - caught with as much as a nip bottle anywhere, automatic expulsion. Everywhere, that is, except the bars the college establishes on campus, for students.
Students can go there and drink, but the place is staffed (and serves food too - that is a must). So no binge drinking - gone. No getting too drunk - you're cut off. Students learn responsible behavior, cause it is reinforced. Past a cer
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That is not in the best interests of colleges, students, or the surrounding society. As the War on Drugs shows, draconian punishments don't do anything but victimize people needlessly.
Or they simply go outside the campus to drink, and endanger both themselves and innocent bystanders on their way back.
But suppose it worked. What do you
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Other replies have already shown why this approach is guaranteed to fail.
I'll just drop in to suggest that perhaps a little more curriculum content and stricter grading standards might lead some students to reduce their partying so as to pass, and other students to drop out early on, since they really didn't belong in college in teh first place.
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Sounds to me like now is the time to invest in a funeral parlour or some other corpse-handling business. Or, if I'd done so recently, sue Stanford for their policies discriminating against my business.
Re:Culture (Score:5, Interesting)
There is an obvious way to fix this. But it takes a lot of work to change the existing culture, and the transition phase will be painful.
Do what Europe has been doing successfully for decades. Lower the drinking age to 16 years, and raise the driving age to 18 years. Kids will still drink, but the thrill of doing something crazy and/or illegal has long since worn off, by the time they get their drivers licenses and get into college. Also, there is a lot less stigma around drinking. So, calling another adult to give you a ride home is really not a big deal.
I have grown up in this culture (in Germany), and excessive drinking is a lot less of a problem than it is in the US. People still get drunk, don't get me wrong, but hear of far fewer cases of drunk driving and I have a really hard time remembering the last time I heard of anybody going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
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Blame MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), who got the drinking age raised back to 21 (it was 18 at one point), rather than getting the driving age raised.
The real problem is drivers who don't know how to drink, not drinkers who don't know how to drive. Lowering the drinking age and raising the driving age gives kids the opportunity to learn to drink responsibly before they're allowed to drive. Allowing them to drive before they've learned to drink responsibly is a mistake.
Of course, some people never l
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worse, you can die for your country at 18. And whenever the draft is reactivated, you won't even get a choice about it.
Theoretically one could be drafted before they even had a chance to vote.
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worse, you can die for your country at 18. And whenever the draft is reactivated, you won't even get a choice about it. But as long as it is men only then you can clam sex discrimination and hold out waiting for the courts to rule on that.
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I would imagine that has already been tried. I assume they military would still take you away while the courts considered it.
Likely the courts would only cause young women to also be pulled into the selective service program. But optimistically I would like to see a a move to each individual being able to decide on mandatory service in something like AmeriCorps/NCCC or Military service.
But the US Constitution is pretty clear, every able bodied male is part of the militia. A constitutional amendment would be
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The drinking age is still 18, and mostly for that reason.
Each state has raised it to 21 at this point, but there's plenty of places outside of state law but inside federal law.
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Is our society so alcohol obsessed that we consider the pinnacle of father-son bonding to be the consumption of alcohol in each other's presence? What is wrong with us?
Is our society so family obsessed that we'd force father and son to spend their drinking time with each other? What is wrong with us?
Re:Culture (Score:5, Insightful)
Do what Europe has been doing successfully for decades. Lower the drinking age to 16 years, and raise the driving age to 18 years.
The problem with that is that if you can only drive when you are 18 you need to have a reasonable public transport system which the US utterly lacks...and lower population density is not an excuse because Canada has a lower density than even the US and yet still has a public transport system which is reasonably comparable to many EU countries.
Re:Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not quite true. Canada has a lower overall population density than the US, but the urban density is about 40% higher than the US (Europe is 270% higher than the US).
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Re:Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
Such as driving to an after school job (or work study program)?
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Then use "other forms of transportation." In my state, any K-12 student more than 2 miles from the nearest school is eligible for a tax-funded bus ride to and from school. Below grade 9, it's even closer. There's also no minimum cycling age.
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Hilarious!
The largest city in Canada can't even manage to keep the subway running from 1:30 am to 6 am. The only way between the top 5 cities in Canada via public transit is Via Rail, which is so significantly more expensive than using a private airline that I have yet to meet anyone who has used it.
Heck, 1 of the top 5 cities in Canada (the one that's the capital of the whole country!) doesn't even have a rail system! Just buses!
NYC has them running 24x7 and Amtrak will take you cheaply (in comparison to
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Canada has a long way to go to cache up to Europe, but London only got 24 hour subways service starting literately 2 weeks ago [metronews.ca].
Ottawa's O-Train LRT is 15 years old and another line is under construction and Canada's top 5 cities are a lot smaller then the United State's top 5.
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In order, I'd rank Europe as best at public transit, USA as not great, and Canada as terrible.
You are cherry picking the best of the US and the worst in Canada. Try comparing the transit system in Chicago. The Chicago LRT-equivalent network follows a star pattern so you can only go into and from the centre to the suburbs it serves. Plus it only operates at certain times of the day to serve commuters. This makes it utterly useless unless you are a commuter going to an from the city at normal office hours. Young people need to get from their home often to a job in a shop which is unlikely to be in th
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Lower the drinking age to 16 years, and raise the driving age to 18 years
Worst idea ever. Why do we need to raise the driving age to 18? If you have a teen age child - you know how hard it is to get them to all of their activities, school, friends, work... The easy solution is to have them get their drivers license and get them a car to use. If they want to do anything somewhere else all you need to provide is the gas money - not take time off of work, or make them stay at home and do nothing.
I do agree with lowering the drinking age to 16. Much better that kids learn to
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If you have a teen age child - you know how hard it is to get them to all of their activities, school, friends, work... The easy solution is to have them get their drivers license and get them a car to use.
A local bicycle shop has an even easier solution.
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There have been studies done, and what they found is that new drivers are at high risk of accidents, it doesn't matter what age they are.
The only thing that reduces about fatalities is the age group being excluded, not the new drivers.
Hear less, and more likely to die (Score:2)
> but hear of far fewer cases of drunk driving and I have a really hard time
You certainly may hear about it less. On the other hand, German men have a 27% higher rate of death from cirrhosis of the liver than US men. In fatal car crashes, alcohol is involved slightly more often in Germany than in the US.
There may be less media attention in Germany, but the policies aren't actually working any better than US policies.
See also:
http://apps.who.int/iris/bitst... [who.int]
US numbers have improved greatly since the
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Wow, a story bemoaning how research wasn't involved in determining alcohol policy gets +5 comment backed up by "I can't remember". First hit on google for alcohol abuse us v europe:
"Among Americans there is a commonly held perception young people in European countries are
introduced to alcohol in a cultural context that reduces heavy and harmful drinking......
In fact, in comparison with young people in the United States,
- A greater percentage of young people from nearly all European countries report drinking
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Perhaps you don't know any 16 year olds, but it is hardly uncommon for 16 year olds in the US to go out and binge drink even while it is illegal.
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Even better, take some 16 year old Americans and put them in Europe where nobody cares about the legal drinking age and watch what happens!* Once they realize that they can walk into any random liquor store and buy as much alcohol as they can carry, they will do just that. Meanwhile, the local kids won't understand why this such a big deal.
*Unless they're from New Jersey. In that case, get somewhere safe and lock the door.
Well, they do it once or twice and then it loses its appeal. At least that's how it worked for me and my friends. The locals don't get it because their parents aren't so uptight and let them have a beer or a glass of wine with them before they turn sixteen. In the US, our parents let us have drinks before we turn 21, because that age is ridiculously high, but not always before we're sixteen.
For most people, binge drinking loses its appeal pretty quickly. Kids in the US only drink and drive because they can'
Numbing Culture (Score:4, Insightful)
When people realize their only hope is to train to be a successful obedient slave they have a tendency to seek measures that will help deaden the pain, and deceive themselves into thinking they really are having a great time. The bonus? They get to pay for it all themselves and go into lifelong debt for their efforts.
Should have picked a trade before choosing the rank and file of paper pushers, report carriers, metrics analysis and professional privilege checking.
Re:Numbing Culture (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, school was initially "invented" for this purpose: being obedient slaves - though that is a bit of a misnomer. Really the goal was the unify the population by ensuring the new generation would think and behave in a more controlled and similar way. And as horrible as it might sound, it worked great.
Boosted the economy, science, reduced crime, boosted happiness, etc.
Now then again and as per usual there's a balance to how much rules and stupid stuff one can abide to, and we crossed that line long ago. You can see it when most students hate school just because of what's being forced onto them. This one rule just adds to the pile.
Humans are terrible at balance.
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When people realize their only hope is to train to be a successful obedient slave they have a tendency to seek measures that will help deaden the pain, and deceive themselves into thinking they really are having a great time.
So you think that athletic and frat/sorority parties are a thing because of anxiety over student debt and earning prospects? Does that really hit most students prior to graduation? I can accept that academic (and extracurricular) pressures are a factor, but if one is convinced that the system is stacked against him or her, why go to college in the first place?
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Because it's being offered as the only solution to enter the middle class. Because it lets you feel (and seem) like you're accomplishing something... even though you have serious doubts that you'll get the advertised results.
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Indeed. Same for the drug-issue. Just remember that hard drugs used to be legal about 100 years ago (at least in Europe) and it was not a big problem. It became a symptom of other problems when the economy went down the drain. Now the fight against drugs is itself a huge problem and causes far more damage than drugs ever could.
Lower the drinking age (Score:5, Informative)
Get rid of Liddy Doles pernicious tying of Federal Highway subsidies to a drinking age of 21. Let the states lower the drinking age as they see fit, and watch the states with the lower drinking ages have a reduction of binge drinking in their colleges.
Re:Lower the drinking age (Score:5, Interesting)
I was going to post something similar.
In my own experience, problem drinking stems from unpreparedness. If you are living away from home for the first time it can be an overwhelming experience when all these new and previously restricted things are shoved in your face.
You could solve a lot of problems by just preparing people earlier. And what better way to prepare than to get your hands dirty? As in, allow some "bad" things (drinking, drug use, sexual relationships, break-ups and financial mishaps to name a few) to happen while the child is still in a safe and controlled environment so they know better how to deal with them when they arise in the real world.
Think of it like vaccinating your kids for the real world. It doesn't just help them, it helps the other kids around them.
The problem is 21 (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand compare that to Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries with their fake moral, fake abstinence, and you get people being so long forbidden of drinking that the first time they are out of the control of their parents and are with likeminded out of control individuals they are trying to go into dick measuring contents, trying to impress girls and whatnot, or just plain enjoying the forbidden fruit so much and so often that they frequently drink till they pass, repeatedly for many years. There is no element of embarrassment of falling asleep on the toilet seat with pants down and your parents coming to wake you up. There is not enough head hurting from getting drunk while the organisms isn't strong enough. And there is definitely the self-ratification of doing the forbidden thing.
Same in fake morals America. The solution to responsible drinking isn't prohibition and increasing age restriction. It is controlled introduction from a young age, that allows to gain experience, lose the novelty, and also build tolerance.
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I grew up in the US, and small amounts of beer or wine for kids was pretty normal during family gatherings, usually 10 and up. (this was back in the 80's in the rural midwest)
I'm skeptical of your implied idea that alcohol tolerance earned in childhood could matter in adulthood. The up-regulation of enzymes related to metabolism of alcohol are not likely to be permanent, and more likely to change as we age with a very large hereditary influence.
PS - I've drank with Finns, they drink to get drunk, not to be
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Alcohol should be drunk for the taste, and as a social activity, to reasonable levels, ideally under the DUI limit, even if you are not driving. Not for getting drunk. Wine tasting from an early age during family diners may be good education.
If you drink to get drunk, even during a social event, you are doing drugs, and a dangerous one.
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ideally under the DUI limit, even if you are not driving.
Why?
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I know where my limit is. I don't see what the DUI limit has to do with recreational drinking without driving.
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I don't see what the DUI limit has to do with recreational drinking without driving.
For some reason, when someone is arrested for drunken bad behavior, the news media reports things like 'so-and-so had a blood alcohol level of .10, which is over the legal limit for driving' even when the person wasn't actually driving. Why does the magic number .08 matter in contexts apart from driving? I mean, obviously that BAL was too high for the person who got arrested, but there's no rule against drinking a lot.
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Doing "DRUGS"!? Oh no! It must be bad if it has the word "DRUGS" applied to it!
Heaven forbid some one want to alter thier consciousness for recreational purposes. Alcohol has been consumed specifically for this purpose for thousands of years, who are you to tell us getting drunk is bad and what on earth is so bad about it? Sure, doing it all the time is a good way to ruin your health and your life but so is eating Mcdonalds.
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Most scheduled drugs aren't that bad actually. For most parts the biggest risks are linked to their illegal nature.
What many people don't realize is that legality aside, belongs in the "hard drugs" list, next to cocaïne and MDMA. In fact, globally, alcohol is the substance that harms society the most, followed by heroin and crack. In the personal harm / addition potential chart, it is somewhere in the middle.
You can interpret this two ways : either as a warning against unreasonable drinking or as an en
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Here's some data.
Country/ Legal Age / heavy episodic drinking %
Romania/18/ 7.5
Germany/16/12.5
USA/21/16.9
Bulgaria/18/19.6
Ukraine/18/22.6
UK/18/28.0
France/18/29.4
Greece/18/34.9
http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/profiles/en/ [who.int]
Wisconsin does not have a minimum drinking age. (Score:2)
But not all bars server to people under 21.
Do you have any data to back this up? (Score:2)
Here's Alcohol consumption per capita [wikipedia.org]. The U.S. is towards the bottom (least) of the pack.
Here's Rate of alcohol-related deaths [worldlifeexpectancy.com]. Eastern European countries top the list. Germany, France, Denmark Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, Poland, hell even Canada all have higher death rates than the U.S. Italy and Spain have much lower death rates.
Here's a list of countries with the highest alcoholism [visual.ly]
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And there is a strong correlation with alcohol abuse (http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf).
Frankly serving a 6 year booze, even if diluted is appalling.
And I'm from Belgium, where the legal drinking age is 16 and you have your first half of wine at 12.
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While I agree that the US drinking age is too high, and that US culture should change to gradually introduce people to drinking, the European picture is not nearly as rosy as you paint it. I'm originally from Belgium and was there in college, and while I never saw a kegstand, we all still drank more than was wise. Blackouts were not uncommon, as was drinking yourself sick, and needing help getting home. I'd say a big difference was the pace - people weren't binging, but they'd start at 22:00 and drink so la
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cultural varies by state. Louisiana is very different then Alabama or Texas.
Meanwhile, on the rest of the planet... (Score:3)
... the drinking age is 18, or even lower, many college campuses have undergraduate pubs, and binge drinking is a vastly smaller issue.
Americans are stupid.
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Probably, I think Iraq, ISIS and a tidal wave of African refugees from Libya and Syrian refugees is quite enough defense for now. I assume by subsidizing "our" economies you mean that it is not just Apple who will be paying taxes in future. Being friends with America is certainly not cheap.
As for the topic, infantile behavior from alcohol consumption might be improved by restricting the supply of the stuff and replacing it with a less harmful psychoactive substance. Apparently however the world has to conti
Don't drink and derive (Score:3)
I am not saying that drinking is a skill, but the craziness occurs because many kids go from not being allowed to drink, ever, to having unrestricted access. I think that most of us have learned that abstinence does not work, but still we think we can let kids learn to drink all at once and not see terrible consequences.
In civilized places like Texas a parent is an affirmative defense to a minor drinking. I certainly knew how to manage my drinking by the time I was 18. I saw many people without this skill get shit faced. Of course when people are getting drunk for the first time as adults without supervision there are going to be negative consequences.
Also, of course, there are people who are addicts, and those people need to be identified early and provided with appropriate medical attention. I can't imagine a worse time to learn one is an addict than at college.
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Mixing alcohol and calculus never ends well.
Re:Don't drink and derive (Score:4)
Don't drink and derive
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You _can't_ differentiate after enough drinking. That seems to be much of the source of the problem.
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, but the craziness occurs because many kids go from not being allowed to drink, ever, to having unrestricted access.
I disagree. The craziness occurs because its a cultural norm. My parents let me try alcohol (in controlled moderation) from the time I was 10-12 or so. A glass of wine or a beer with dinner at family events was fine; although i didn't much care for beer. I was allowed to try brandy, rum, gin, etc. They even let me get myself drunk a couple times to 'experience' it.
So I wasn't going from no access to unrestrictred access (and nor were any of my close friends). But the parties I went to, everyone showed up wi
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Certainly there is some emulation going on.
But, if you know how to handle the situation (because you have experience) and are able to think critically about what you are doing and what the consequences of your actions are, then you are more likely to be more responsible about your decisions.
You may also influence some of your peers to make better decisions.
You are mostly proving the point that is being made rather than refuting it.
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Drinking is absolutely a skill. The first time I ran a 400 m race I barely finished because I started as if I was 100 m. Drinking requires the same pacing because it's easy to drink too much too fast, before you feel it.
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Indeed. It's called: knowing your limits.
How does one learn what their limits are though? By testing them and sometimes falling down.
The trick is to learn your limits safely in a controlled fashion rather than testing them with a bunch of other people who have as much experience as you do (ie little to none).
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At 21 you could buy and drive a car, but if you were caught driving before that you would be arrested.
The difference is that many U.S. cities have chosen to make a car a necessity to get and keep a job. Case in point: There will be no public transportation at all in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from 5:45 PM tomorrow (Saturday) to about 6 AM the following Tuesday. (Source: fwcitilink.com) Alcohol, by contrast, isn't a necessity for anything I can think of.
Good luck with that (Score:4, Informative)
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Went to a retreat at a monastery in German one time. They immediately told us about the three B's. They has placed the chapel right next to the swimming pool and the bar. You could pray ( Beten), swim ( Baden) and drink ( Bier trinken) all that the same time. Those Catholic monks know how to party.
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Simplest, cheapest solution (Score:2)
How is it on Colorado campuses these days? (Score:3)
While I'm sure the Colorado campuses have reactionary rules regarding marijuana consumption -- to mollify parents, and because they're so paranoid about alcohol they'd naturally extend the same confused Calvinistic moralism to marijuana -- how has it affected campus alcohol consumption?
I'm guessing it hasn't gone away, but I wonder if serious incidents have declined. Of course I would expect many people to "double their pleasure", smoking pot and drinking, I would kind of expect that pot consumption would temper the desire for alcohol consumption, either from a don't-want-to-get-off-the-couch perspective or simply because getting high got them 50% of the inebriation they could tolerate and the booze necessary for the other 50% manages to be below the puke-and-black-out level that using only alcohol would produce.
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shit, I forgot where I was going with that.
Drinking Time (Score:2)
I'm glad they mentioned Dartmouth College. The administration at Dartmouth has long tried to restrict alcohol, while the culture there fully embraces it. There's even an unofficial mascot, Keggy the Keg.
But to fully appreciate Dartmouth drinking, you need to understand Drinking Time: https://youtu.be/avYUL1A-WUM?t... [youtu.be]
An opportunity for innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
Lisa Lapin, the vice president of university communications, clarified that the goal is to prevent medical transports [i.e. trips to the hospital].
That's an eminently achievable goal without any restrictions on activities at all.
If they really aren't comfortable with a "leave 'em where they lie" policy, the admniistration could always try a new sanctioned procedure of (1) propping them in the corner, (2) feeding them a spoon of Ipecac, and (3) hooking a gallon IV to their arm until morning. I'll bet < $100/instance with a minimally trained campus volunteer squad. Other than ensuring the little 'uns don't fall forward to drown in their own vomit, a hospital isn't going to be able to do much more than that.
Pour out 1 ml (Score:2)
Lawsuits (Score:4, Interesting)
Psych 101 (Score:2)
I'm not being demeaning, just pointing out the obvious to the college...
When you tell someone they can't do something or limit them, they.........? You don't know the answer to this, obviously, or you're trying to get MORE medical transports to up the budget. When you tell people they can't do something, they go to every effort to do it, more often to excess. When you limit something, it triggers the immediate dismissal of the order by the user, and encourages non-users to use because they feel they're m
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Re: Psych 101 (Score:2)
Yes. Exactly. Let them make their mistakes and pay for it with their freedom, their health, their life. Others will get the picture through observation, and when one feels psychologically free to make a decision, they will weigh the costs and benefits more effectively knowing that their decision counts... Big time. In other countries hands are chopped off for certain crimes. This is a more personally-centered method of trial and "freak show error".
Lack of freedom triggers one to seek or prove their fre
It's based on plenty of research (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer is obvious ... (Score:2)
If you want to reduce binge drinking, lower the drinking age back to 18 in the U.S., before MADD started us down this road in the name of "think of the children!".
In my undergraduate days in the 70's, beer and occasional wine were staples at college parties, starting from the moment you were a freshman. Going to the hospital with alcohol poisoning was almost unheard of. You simply couldn't drink enough beer or wine to do that without puking it up. Those rare cases when it did occur were because of "hunc
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This message has been brought to you by DAMM (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).
Weed it out! (Score:2)
How about they just make the programs rigorous enough that people who engage in that kind of behavior flunk out after the first semester? College and Universities have become roughly the equivalent of daycare centers. Raise the standards and thin the herd.
I wonder if they ever thought to ask... (Score:2)
"Why are they drinking so much?" Though I imagine this is more honestly about liability than any concern for the students.
Good luck with that (Score:2)
Binge drinking was often the only option when I was in college. I never had time during the week with all the stress from being a student and it naturally turned into the easiest outlet. I'm not saying college should necessarily be easier but I'm honestly not surprised that it's the outcome of high stress environments. It's not even just greek life where this happens cause I sure wasn't and I sure got fucked up beyond belief.
I know my department started having a calendar for the professors so they could mak
Stanford's new alcohol policy... (Score:2)
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Liquor is sold in "pints" and "half pints" typically 375ml and 200ml in every place I've been to -- in fact it's very difficult to actually purchase the little single shot bottles in many states without purchasing a bunch of them together in a larger package.
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