<p>“right and duty”–of course the laws have to be passed. That keeps the law from reflecting the opinion of one individual. I would not be pleased if prohibition came back, but if it did I’d obey the law. </p>
<p>BTW, getting soda and other junk foods out of schools has been an issue in my state. Elementary students are weighed at school and a report sent home to parents. I read that in the U.S. obesity it is the #1 health problem in cost to society. The government obviously can’t force people to exercise or eat right (or quit smoking, drinking, whatever) but then the same people who have ruined their own health then expect Uncle Sam to pay their medical bills. I don’t like that. I wish they could sign away that right.</p>
<p>I admit that my son is not a light drinker. He does not drink alcohol at all.</p>
<p>I do have a problem with govt and foods. supposedly the rise in the cheap cost of high fructose corn syrup and American weight gain. prior to it’s use sugar was used. more money, no supersized cokes back then. </p>
<p>Take the corn syrup out of our foods and put it into my Toyota!!</p>
<p>Mini, thanks for the link. I passed it on to my son- he just signed on to work on a research project for alcohol studies at his school (not as a test subject!! which sounds similar to this.</p>
<p>“That’s why most of the Cali kids I met in college were much heavier marijuana users than the people back in upstate New York.”</p>
<p>The inverse of this is that perhaps colleges with heavy drinking tend not to be big drug schools. Virtually everybody I knew in college was a big drinker, and they all did well and graduated on time. The one big marijuana user I knew could barely leave his dorm room without getting high, and he flunked a course his senior year and didn’t graduate. I saw him a few years later, and he still hadn’t graduated.</p>
<p>To put drug use into perspective, here is the prevalence of drug and alcohol use within the prior 30 days among full-time college students (1 to 4 years after high school) in the national survey conducted by the University of Michigan:</p>
<p>It is true that one of my friends took 7 years to get his PHd in statistics- his wife blame it on pot smoking ( and his Harley)
however- aside from the crap that some dealers may add to it, I am sure that if there were a lot of deaths on campuses nationwide that were attributed to marijuana, we would have heard about it.
We do hear about a lot of alcohol abuse however</p>
<p>So what does that actually mean interesteddad? And how reliable the numbers? How many kids who use crystal meth are going to admit to it? You know how much of it the cops sieze every year and how many labs blow up? What’s my point? There is a lot more of it being used than anyone admits to useing. A kid is a lot more apt to admit to drinking a couple of beers than he is to using crack or crystal meth and anyone with an once of sense would be more worried about their kid getting hooked on meth than drinking beer out of a trough. Not that drinking beer out of a trough isn’t a problem.</p>
<p>In the big scheme of things I am a lot more worried about drugs, STDs, and unplanned pregnancies than I am alcohol. But no so worried that I want to put cops in bedrooms and vending machines. Heck they can’t stop the drugs.</p>
<p>Re: link to article in post 207–
The article states low sensitivity to alcolhol (those that can “hold their liquor” well) at age 20 as a factor in predicting alcoholism.
However, are people born alcohol-sensitive or not, or is it more that these kids were so used to drinking by age 20 that they were no longer alcohol sensitive?? Isn’t everyone pretty sensitive to alcohol when they first begin drinking?</p>
<p>Interesting thread since we received a letter from our D’s school today that she had been found in violation of the conduct rules for possession of alcohol. She is a freshman and goes to a school where there are no fraternites or sororities. My concern, of course, is binge drinking based on the stats that many have cited. We have some evidence that this may have happened but no violations before this one. Should we discuss sending her to an alcohol class if the school doesn’t or are we overreacting? How do you recommend that we approach the subject with her?</p>
<p>I guess it all depends on the circumstances of the alcohol infraction. You’ll have to ask her. Beyond that, you might want to read up on the alcohol policies at the school and try to get some sense of the alcohol scene and enforcement practices. Some schools do random walk throughs of dorm and cite students. So, the range of things that could trigger an alcohol violation can be fairly wide. </p>
<p>At my daughter’s school, you’d have to really screw up to get cited, so I’d take a violation pretty seriously. There are other schools where you could get cited for having a six pack in a dorm lounge on Saturday night when security does a walk-through. It’s hard to generalize.</p>
<p>You can get an idea of how prevalent arrests and disciplinary actions for alcohol are by searching here:</p>
<p>Search for the college. When you get to the college’s page, click the “ARRESTS” link at the bottom of the page. It’ll give you the liquor law arrests and disciplinary actions for the last three years. Reporting is mandatory under the Cleary Act.</p>
<p>Looked up a few schools quickly via the above link, and was surprised to find that several schools with heavy drinking reputations had FAR fewer reported liquor violations than the ones that DIDN’T have the heavy party/drink reputations. I don’t get it.</p>
<p>You have to evaluate the arrests and the on-campus discipline citations in the context of each school. For example, you could have a low-binge drinking rate school with a lot of violations if the campus is dry and security does routine sweeps through dorms.</p>
<p>Conversely, at my daughter’s school, you would have to do something from a behavior standpoint to draw the attention of the school officials or the local police: drunk and disorderly, falling down drunk walking by a police cruiser, vandalism, walking around with an open container, drunk driving, reported by an RA for being a drunk ***hole in the dorm, fighting, transported for alcohol poisoning, etc. There aren’t many violations, but each violaton represents really stupid behavior and almost certainly earned a sit down chat with a dean and probably an alcohol workup by the counseling center.</p>
<p>I refered phoenixdad to the site in order to help him wrap his arms around how common alcohol citatons are at his daughter’s school. Do they hand 'em out like confetti? Or are they rare enough to be almost certainly serious in nature?</p>
<p>“Looked up a few schools quickly via the above link, and was surprised to find that several schools with heavy drinking reputations had FAR fewer reported liquor violations than the ones that DIDN’T have the heavy party/drink reputations. I don’t get it.”</p>
<p>I do get it. At many of the drinking-oriented schools, the school administration ignores and often condons and encourages the drinking activities. It can take a lot for a student to incur a infraction or arrest. Usually the infraction must be accompanied by some criminal action, such as vandalism or assault. These attitudes often spill over into the local community. The economy of small college towns is often heavily dependent on income from the students and much of that may come from alcohol sales. Local police may ignore underaged drinking and only act when situations are dangerously out of control. Schools that are trying to stem alcohol use can be much more aggressive.</p>
<p>Hadn’t considered off-campus factors. Wonder if anyone has ever done a study on campus location/isolation as factor in incidence of binge drinking? Though certainly there are plenty of exceptions-</p>
<p>Dormitory sweeps by the authorities? What are they running prisons? What’s next full body cavity searches?</p>
<p>Maybe part of the problem when colleges tell students to obey the law is their own ambivalence towards and frequent violation of the laws they don’t agree with like free speech guarantees, immigration laws, ROTC laws, and racial discrimination laws.</p>
which sounds similar to this.</p>