By Brian Carnell

Friday, April 12, 2002

Steve Milloy has some harsh words for a study on drinking among college students published in the March 2002 issue of Journal of Studies on Alcohol which grabbed headlines with its claim that alcohol consumption plays a role in the deaths of 1,400 college students annually.

How did the author of the study, Ralph Hingson, arrive at that figure? Simple. About 31 percent of people aged 18-24 are college students. So Hingson looked up how many drunk driving deaths there were among 18-24 year olds, and assumed that 31 percent of those deaths were college students (which would be 1,138). Then he looked up the number of non-vehicle alcohol related deaths and assumed that 31 percent of all of those deaths were among college students (which would be 307). Then he simply added those two numbers together to arrive at 1,445 alcohol-related deaths among college students annually.

As Milloy points out, Hingson never bothers to offer any evidence that college students are involved in alcohol-related deaths at the exact same ratio as their percentage of 18-24 year olds. As Milloy writes, that is "equivalent to assuming that because women constitute about half the population, they commit half of all crime."

Or, alternately, it is a bit like arguing that since X percentage of 18-24 year olds are illiterate, that X percentage of college students 18-24 must be illiterate.

More importantly, as Milloy masterfully points out, even if every single one of Hingson's assumptions are true, why all of the emphasis on college students? Milloy writes,

...if college students have alcohol problems in proportion to their presence in the age group, why crackdown only on college students? Are the other 69 percent of 18- to 24-year olds not worthy of attention?

It isn't surprising to learn that Hingson sits on the board of directors of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, which has recently focused on college aged drinking. Apparently serving a politically correct cause is more important than getting an accurate handle on the costs of college-aged drinking.

Source:

College drinking study is intoxicating scam. Steve Milloy, Fox News, April 12, 2002.

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