WASHINGTON – More than 4 million people younger than age 21 drove under the influence of drugs or alcohol last year, according to a government report released Wednesday. That’s one in five of all Americans aged 16-20.
“That’s an awful lot of kids if you think about it,” said Charlene Lewis, acting director of the Office of Applied Studies at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which produced the report.
The report, based on a large household survey of drug use, found a small drop in driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol between 2002 and 2003. In 2002, 22 percent drove under the influence; last year, it was 20 percent.
Just 4 percent of these young people reported being arrested and booked for driving under the influence in the year before they were interviewed.
The report was released Wednesday in advance of New Year’s Eve in hopes of raising consciousness of the issue on a night when the risk of drinking and driving is high, federal officials said. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among young people.
Young people were most likely to drink alcohol and then drive, with 17 percent admitting they were guilty of the practice. Fourteen percent said they had driven under the influence of illicit drugs, and 8 percent reported driving after consuming a combination of alcohol and drugs.
Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator for the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future survey of students, said that while teens growing up in the 1980s were exposed to heavy media campaigns against drunken driving, that’s not true for today’s teens. He warned of “generational forgetting.”
“Each generation has to be re-educated about the dangers of any of these behaviors,” he said.
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