Epidemiological analysis of secular trends in drinking behaviors can facilitate an informed debate about the likely efficacy of changes in the minimum legal drinking age and other public health policies, such as zero-tolerance laws for underage drinking and driving. The accuracy of the claim that the development of a “binge-drinking culture” among college students occurred subsequently to changes in drinking-age laws warrants scrutiny. If true, particular attention should be paid to how these putative trends in binge drinking differ by age, gender, and student-status. Such descriptive epidemiological analyses can motivate and inform more formal policy analysis, as they can elucidate the magnitude of trends in binge drinking and how they might differ by key demographic variables. Such analyses are also relevant to clinical practice as the leading causes of death among adolescents -- motor vehicle accidents, suicide, and homicide -- are all likely be impacted by alcohol use.3, 7, 13–15 Given recent developments suggesting that adolescence may be a unique period of vulnerability for the effects of alcohol on neurobiological development, 16 such analyses are timely with regard to both scientific and cultural debates.
