March Sadness: The sobering reality of youth binge drinking

March Madness is wrapping up. That means we've seen plenty of great basketball games. But unfortunately, we've also seen alcohol-related advertising.

It's nice that the NCAA has taken some steps to limit the amount of alcohol advertising during its marquee tournament. But there are still some ads, and the larger question is whether it's appropriate to advertise alcohol on the public airwaves at all.

What's particularly unsettling is that alcohol ads have a huge impact on young people and often lead to underage drinking.

This is not just a theory. There's empirical evidence that links alcohol ads to binge drinking - usually defined as five or more drinks in a row. A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics ("Cued Recall of Alcohol Advertising on Television and Underage Drinking Behavior") found underage participants were only slightly less likely than adults to see alcohol ads but nearly four times as likely to engage in binge or hazardous drinking after seeing the ads.

Alcohol advertising during sports events is by no means the only thing that encourages binge drinking, and the effects of alcohol are felt by almost every college student, regardless of whether they actually consume alcohol. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), 1,825 college students ages 18-24 die annually from alcohol-related unintentional injuries, including car accidents. Nearly 600,000 are injured while under the influence of alcohol, and some 25-percent of college students report academic problems related to their drinking.

Even high school students are not immune to problems associated with alcohol. The 2012 Illinois Youth Survey (the most recent to have a report associated with it) found binge drinking is on the rise among high school seniors throughout the state, with over 30 percent admitting they partook in binge drinking.

The number of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders who used alcohol within the previous 30 days remained steady but is above the national average. Among seniors in high school, 46.8 percent drank alcohol in the past 30 days compared to 41.5 percent nationally. And when it comes to alcohol use, the study found no differences between youth living in different types of Illinois communities.

Colleges and universities, in particular, are aware of the problems associated with binge drinking. Many of these institutions have worked closely with scientists to develop and test new forms of intervention to curb binge drinking, according the Butler Center for Research at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation.

One intervention attempts to correct widely held misconceptions regarding social norms of college drinking, while another is a more intensive counseling-based intervention.

The problem of binge drinking among youth is not going to disappear overnight, but it can be severely curtailed.

A top priority needs to be education. School officials at both the high school and post-secondary levels must ensure students receive appropriate information about the dangers associated with binge drinking, and parents need to do the same.

And maybe, just maybe, we could reach a point, as we did with tobacco advertising, where people say enough is enough, and we can watch a sporting event with our kids without an ad for alcohol appearing.

Ramsen Kasha is the Executive Director of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation's Chicago facility at 867 N. Dearborn.