Binge drinking is viewed as an increasingly common problem on college campuses. Imagine you have been hired by the college to decrease binge drinking by the campus population. How might you approach this problem?

Ban it?

Have the university put on special events on the weekends, especially ones that run at night. It won't stop all binge drinking, but it will give the students something to do besides drinking on the weekends.

Well, I'm not sure how. It'd take partnering with the local taverns, police, alcohol vendors, and other stakeholders. It's definitly not something that can only be tackled on campus.

The aniversery of this is coming up for our relativly little town. Another good teachign tool for our small campus
http://www.weau.com/home/headlines/25473599.html


Nah, too easy to get around. How would they find out who has it? What was the pipeline that let them get it? Way too easy to get around a ban...

Lower the drinking age. If people grow up with alcohol, rather than being thrown into it as soon as they leave home, they will have a healthier attitude towards it and will be less likely to get wasted because they can (or because its cool by virtue of being illegal).

[edit] woops, not a college campus solution.

Spike everything with Antabuse.

My ideas:
Classify alcohol as a drug.
Completely re-work all drug schedules based on the newest data.
Make only those drugs in the lowest schedule be allowed to be produced, sold or used, and only by a licensed seller/maker (other than small homebrews or stills, depending on local laws of course).
Classify all unlicensed sale or manufacture the same as you would for other drugs.
Higher penalties for under aged sales, including fines for a first offense, loss of license and fines/jail for a second offense (fines for the employee who makes the sale as well).
A staggered drinking age, 18 for beer or wine served in bars, 21 for spirits. Maybe even 16, that works in places in Europe.
Jails (not prisons), should have large sections devoted for nothing but detox, where people are put to sober up over night, without charges being made for first offenses. Rehab next, jail for recidivists.
More beat patrols, they work.

Harsh in some areas, more relaxed in others, I don't think a broad set of hard punishments or softer options works in all cases, so a layered approach could be best.

I'm talking New Zealand here BTW, the only other country I've been to is Japan, and they sold beer in vending machines -I don't think they have the same level of a problem


Oh, I should have read OP, but still, the drinking age is 18 here, so people are allowed to drink as much as they want at university.

If anyone is caught with alcohol they will be terminated... from the school.

Because that worked out wonderfully for everything else.

I will not write your essay for you

Do it yourself :meh:

Offer a new alternative. Or frequent alcohol tests

I intentionally didn't mention other drugs, but I hoped that you could infer that I would want changes surrounding those laws as well.

http://www.narconon.org/drug-education/videos/is-alcohol-a-drug.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrsAbSN2IMk&feature=player_embedded

According to the law and common society it isn't.
Its always separated for some reason, they always say "Drugs and alcohol" in the news and media.

You got caught drinking on campus, and now you have been forced to write a paper on it, didn't you?

Also, banning it doesn't do [censored], it just makes college students take it more underground. Calling it a narcotic is [censored]. Immediate termination makes life svck a lot, which is what my local college does.

Best to just lower the drinking age, imo.

add tons of caffine to the alcohol so that one drink knocks 'em out.

They do that already, it's called Four Loko, and a bunch of other delicious mixes.

Classifying it as a drug would be a bad idea. Look at how Prohibition turned out; it didn't stop anything, it all just went underground. The same thing would happen here, college campus or no.

more four loko then. we'll trade an alarming increase of binge drinking for an alarming increase of black out drinking.

Force-feed everyone alcohol every night for a month or two. Vary quantity for each individual to match their tolerance.

As I grew up, I heard a lot about binge drinking through school, about how bad it was for you. They classified it as 'Three or more drinks in less than one hour'. A drink being something like 12oz of beer, 6oz of wine or 1oz of hard liquor.

Now, things get strange. According to these guidelines, I've never gotten drunk without binge drinking. So either the definition is wrong, or I'm a frequent binge drinker. It takes me a good bit to get drunk because I'm a fairly large guy and if I'm at a party to get drunk, I'ma get drunk. I'll easily have five or six bombs in an hour, usually more, though.

So my solution(s);

1.) Increase the alcohol in alcoholic beverages so I don't need as many to get drunk, and thus I'm not binge drinking.
2.) Change the definition of binge drinking.

Actually, the government banned it from having caffeine in it.

If it's because you're a big guy then that's normal, dosage increases with body mass.
If it's because you're tolerant to alcohol then that's not a good thing...

jump that stuff with expresso goof.

Lower the drinking age. I don't know about you guys, but between 15-19, mostly 15-17, I was a huge binge drinker. Lots of people I know were, because in highschool we would go out and get blackout drunk nearly every weekend. But when I turned 19 and could legally go to the bars and buy booze I basically stopped drinking and now when I drink I drink in moderation.

I learned my lesson after too many mornings of massive headaches and puking my guts out. Plus when it wasnt a "thing we werent supposed to be doing" it really wasnt as great. But perhaps this has nothing to do with drinking age and more just growing up.

Maybe its just something you have to get out of your system. I got mine out of my system in highschool, lots of people start the heavy drinking in college. Some never grow out of it.