10.6 Million Teen-Agers Found to Drink : Health: Federal government survey also estimates that a half million youths are ‘bingers’ who consume alcohol 15 times a week.

Eight million teen-agers--or more than a third of the nation’s teen-age student population--drink alcohol weekly and nearly a half-million are “binge” drinkers who consume an average of 15 drinks each week, according to a report released Thursday by Surgeon General Antonia Coello Novello.

“I am deeply concerned,” Novello said at a press conference. “It is obvious that something is wrong here . . . . We are not properly educating our youth about the harmful effects of alcohol.”

Of the approximately 20.7-million teen-age students in the country, an estimated 10.6 million drink, the study said, and of these, 8 million drink each week. In addition, about 5.4 million have consumed five or more consecutive drinks on at least one occasion, and 454,000 “binge” drink once a week, it said.

“Many of these kids are already alcoholics . . . the rest may well be on their way,” Novello said.

The study said that of the students who drink, 31% sometimes drink alone, 41% drink when they are upset, 25% drink when they are bored and 25% drink to get high.

For “binge” drinkers the percentages increase, with 39% drinking alone, 58% drinking when they are upset, 30% drinking when they are bored and 37% drinking to get high, according to the study.

The study was conducted by Richard P. Kusserow, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. He said he “was not only astonished but disturbed” to find that, despite minimum drinking age laws, almost 7 million students who drink buy their own beverages. All 50 states have a minimum drinking age of 21.

But experts in drug abuse said the figures were not surprising.

“People would be even more alarmed if they looked at how many people are daily users,” said Michael Schiks, program director for the Minnesota-based Hazelden Pioneer House, a substance abuse treatment center for young people.

“One of the things we have seen and said for years was that alcohol has continued to be one of the main drugs used by young people in the United States,” he said. “The top drug used is alcohol--and it always has been, amidst the cocaine scares, the crack scares--it always has been.”

Dr. Robert DuPont, former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, agreed.

“Society looks the other way,” he said. “Nobody does anything about it. When parents or anybody else--teachers, counselors--try to deal with the teen-age drinking problem, they’re treated as if they’re (temperance crusader) Carry Nation. We ought to have a genuine prohibition of underage drinking--that is, enforce it across the board. It’s not just law enforcement, it’s social enforcement.”

The study was based on hourlong interviews conducted with 956 students from eight states, representing grades 7 through 12. The responses were weighted and standardized through a process based on sample size and the size of the U.S. student population.

Novello said the study also showed that teen-agers drink 35% of all wine coolers sold in the United States--or 31 million gallons--and 1.1 billion cans of beer annually. The students “preferred” wine coolers, she said, but drank more beer because it was “cheap and easy to get.”

Overall, “bingers” averaged 15 drinks a week, five times more than the average for all students, she said. Some students, she added, drink as many as 33 beers a week.