For males, 21 to 23 year old subjects had the highest rates of binge drinking, with point estimates of odds ratios ranging from 2.1 to 3.7 across the series, and underwent a modest decline in relative risk for binge drinking over the 1979–2006 timeframe. Odds ratios for the 18–20 year old age group were consistently greater than 1.0, but exhibited a significant decline over the survey period (trend OR=0.979 per year, p=<0.001). Males 15 to 17 years old had binge drinking rates comparable to the reference group in earlier survey years, but underwent the largest decline in binge drinking of all age groups (trend OR=0.963 per year, p<0.001) with odds ratios declining to about 0.4 in recent survey years. Finally, 12–14 year olds had the lowest rates of binge drinking in all survey years, and also underwent a marked decline in risk (trend OR=0.969, p=0.01), with ORs as low as 0.05 in survey recent years. Hence, for males, relative to the 24–34 year old combined-gender, there were significant declines in binge drinking across all age categories in the 1979–2006 period, but with the largest declines seen in the 12–14 and 15–17 year age groups.
