Racial differences were reported. Being White accounted for 78% of all binge-drinking episodes, and Hispanics demonstrated the highest rate of binge-drinking episodes per person for most of the years examined. African Americans constituted the lowest binge-drinking racial group, with fewer than five episodes per person per year (Naimi et al., 2003). Another large scale survey (N = 4,580) found a 33.2% prevalence estimate for binging (≥5/4 drinks in a row during past 2 weeks) for Asians compared with a 60.7% prevalence estimate for Whites (Cranford et al., 2006). The high frequency of a “flushing response” after alcohol ingestion has been theorized to account for the lower binging rates in Asians. The aldehyde dehydrogenase gene (ALDH2, Chromosome 12) that is prevalent in Asian populations fosters severe and predominately negative reactions to a moderate dose of alcohol compared with a heterozygous or individual without the allele (Cook et al., 2005).
