Quick Clips with Dr. Kilmer: 04. Does Everyone Drink? Alcohol Use Statistics in College

In this series we talk with Dr. Jason Kilmer, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He specializes in the development, implementation, and evaluation of substance use prevention and intervention efforts on college campuses and among 18–25 year olds.   

While Dr. Kilmer focuses on college campuses, his insights are universal and particularly helpful for parents with teenagers of any age. Share these recordings with your parenting peers as you all navigate this exciting time in human development (ages 14–25) and work to help your kids navigate away from alcohol and other drugs.

This podcast is brought to you by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of SAMHSA or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. For questions or comments about this podcast, please contact WhatParentsAreSaying@gmail.com. 

Transcript

Quick Clips with Dr. Kilmer: 04. Does Everyone Drink? Alcohol Use Statistics in College

[00:00:00] Debbie: Welcome to Quick Clips with Dr. Kilmer. Today we're talking about substance use stats coming out of colleges. Dr. Kilmer, can you tell us what those stats are and how we should be perceiving them as parents? 

[00:00:20] Dr. Kilmer: Absolutely. So the thing is, is that every year. We always draw our attention to the monitoring the Future Study out of the University of Michigan.

[00:00:28] They're an a, a very longstanding study that has collected data from eighth graders, 10th graders, 12th graders, college students, young adults, not in college, and they've even followed some people over time, so it's really a very, very rich data set. Their most recent data came out summer of 2024, and it was from their 2023 survey.

[00:00:48] There's some really valuable data in here, and I think there's valuable lessons to draw from those. 75% of college students say that at least once in the past year they had alcohol. So to me, there's a couple really important things to draw from that. One is the flip side. One in four students do not drink, and whether that are students who you know have abstained their entire life.

[00:01:11] Whether that's students who are in recovery, if that's students that have tried alcohol, but it's been more than 12 months, it's really important for them to know they're not alone and to feel supported in the decision to not drink. We also know that 75% of students aren't over the legal drinking age, so there are some underage students who make the choice to drink.

[00:01:30] Yet what's very clear is that it's not case thateveryone important for parents. If students say, I really wanna fit in in college and I know everyone drinks, they really don't. And your ability to correct that misperception and the research shows parents can play a part in correcting that misperception can go a long way to letting the student who chooses to not drink feel supported in that decision to not drink.

[00:01:59] And that's a very broad definition of do you drink, asking in the past year. In our field, when we look at current behavior, we tend to look at past 30 days. Past 30 day alcohol use is 55%. It's almost a 50 50 split of students that make the choice to drink and those who do not. In the past 30 days, 45% of students don't drink.

[00:02:18] So if a student says, I'm going to a party tonight. I really don't want to drink. Lots of people are gonna be making that same choice now, one of the things that we've talked about in this field since the mid, mid 1990s is the idea of heavy episodic, or in quotes, binge drinking. And as a very simple definition of binge shrinking, modern in the future looks at five drinks in a row at least once in the past two weeks.

[00:02:42] 22% of students do say at least once in the past two weeks, they've had five or more. Now what gets portrayed in every movie about college, every TV show about college, all the social media posts, the five or more. That's what people see. What do most students do? Not that the flip side, 78% of students either don't drink at all.

[00:03:05] Where if they make the choice to drink have 1, 2, 3, or at the most four. That's so important because if a student says, I really don't want to drink. That can support the confidence and optimism that a student can choose to abstain and do that successfully when they know so many other people are joining them in that decision.

[00:03:25] You know, if a student says, I only wanna drink one drink tonight, sometimes a barrier can be, but isn't it true that everyone else is drinking five, six or seven? No, not at all. That is a pronounced misperception, and so. Certainly if you're under 21, it's illegal to drink. And if someone says, I wanna avoid all of alcohols on wanted effects completely, abstinence is the best way to do that.

[00:03:47] But we're really in a position to make sure that parents, caregivers, and guardians know the accurate statistics so that when they hear things like, well, don't worry 'cause everyone drinks in college, they really don't. When someone says, well, everyone has like five, six, or seven in college, that's completely not true.

[00:04:03] And it's important to know what those real statistics are. 

[00:04:05] Debbie: I really appreciate your perspective on this. I mean, honestly, when I first heard 75%, I was like, yeah, but chunking it down and looking realistically at the numbers, the 56% and then the 22% of binge drinking, that really does change the perspective.

[00:04:23] Thank you, Dr. Kilmer.