IRVINE : Youth Drinking Poll Spurs Council Action

The City Council, reacting to a citywide survey reporting that 75% of high school juniors and seniors drink alcohol, voted 4-0 Tuesday night to immediately schedule a series of community meetings to discuss the problem.

And Mayor Larry Agran said he would ask liquor companies to help pay for the forums.

The yearlong study--conducted by the city’s Substance Abuse Task Force--surveyed 7,286 students from the seventh to 12th grades. A third of high school juniors and seniors surveyed admitted to being “frequent drinkers.”

More than a third of Irvine’s seventh-graders reported drinking within the last year, with almost half of them reporting that they had been intoxicated.

“This is reality we are dealing with, not some sugarcoated report,” said Councilman Cameron Cosgrove, who was appointed by the council to monitor the study’s findings. “We need to decide what we want to do about these issues today, so that we can make sure that this isn’t a problem of tomorrow.”

The report showed that 40% of students answered that they had ridden in a car with a teen-age driver under the influence of alcohol. Of those, 20% said they themselves had driven after drinking.

Agran said Tuesday night: “What people do in their homes is their business. We want to avoid those drunken driving fatal statistics.”

The survey was commissioned by the city last year to find out how frequently students drink alcohol, how they buy it, where and when they drink it, and what the city and schools might do to curb the problem. It is believed to be the most extensive survey of teen-age alcohol abuse ever conducted in Orange County.

Known to students as the Youth Alcohol Access Project, nearly 80% of middle and high school students took part in the anonymous survey.

Alcohol was found to be the substance of choice among the city’s youth, with more than 60% of high school students saying they have tried it. It showed, however, that marijuana and tobacco use in Irvine was below the national levels reported by the National High School Senior Survey.

Forty percent of the students said they have tried tobacco and slightly over 30% said they have used marijuana. Just 5% of Irvine juniors and seniors admitted to having used “crack” cocaine.