Nation IN BRIEF : NATIONWIDE : Underage Drinking Linked to Crime

Surgeon General Antonia Coello Novello said that alcohol is leading youth into emergency rooms and jails. Novello said drinking is a factor in 27% of all murders, 31% of rapes, 33% of property crimes and 37% of robberies committed by youths. Intoxicated youngsters, she said, tend to “provoke assailants, act vulnerable and fail to take normal, common-sensical precautions.” She said she was “shocked” that nearly one in five girls and two in five boys in a high school survey had said it was “OK to force sex if the girl was drunk.”

She said about 350,000 eighth-graders and about 690,000 10th-grade students are binge-drinkers and called for explicit warnings on the labels of alcoholic beverages, tighter law enforcement and restraint in advertising aimed at young people.