Alcohol intervention funds cut

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat

The University of Arizona's five-year, $1.8 million grant from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, aimed at reducing binge drinking, will dry up in May 1999.

"Moderate drinking is one thing, but once you get into the binge drinking level, that's when adverse effects come into factor," said Murray DeArmond, director of Campus Health Services.

The Health Promotions and Preventative Services campaign, which began in 1994, focuses on binge drinking - consuming five or more drinks in one sitting.

In the past three years, the number of students surveyed who said they're binge drinkers has decreased 12.6 percent to 30.6 percent. The national binge drinking average at universities without the media campaign is 40 percent, said Koreen Johanessen, director of Health Promotions and Preventative Services.

"We're not out to eliminate drinking," Johanessen said. "We're trying to make the community a safer place."

Most students do not drink in excess, she said.

"Seventy-five percent of students drink 25 percent of the alcohol, and 25 percent of the students drink 75 percent of the alcohol," Johanessen said.

Her team at Health Promotions initiated a media campaign to dispel misperceptions about the levels of drinking on the UA campus.

Johanessen could not predict how much it would cost to continue the campaign, which has been hailed a success, without government subsidies.

Biweekly advertisements in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, and posters in residence halls and classrooms have stated that 69 percent of students drink four or fewer drinks per sitting. Those statistics have changed from 63 percent in 1996 and 64 percent in 1997, showing a decrease in alcohol use. The frequency of alcohol consumption also has dropped about 9 percent.

"There's a lot of evidence the media campaign is working," DeArmond said.

Jessica Lora, a philosophy and psychology senior, said the program may not work well enough to warrant funding.

"I don't know that these ads are that effective that we should spend our (the UA) money on it," she said.

The Department of Education allocated $270,000 for two years to target drinking in UA residence halls and $200,000 for sorority houses. The campaigns will begin in January.

Since 1994, the Health Promotions program has polled about 2,000 students each year in three different surveys during the spring semester. One version is sent to residence halls, one to Greek houses and another to 50 random classrooms.

"It's in our nature to be attentive to normative behavior," DeArmond said, which is why the campaign advertises how much the average student drinks.

"I think it would affect other students drinking because students are influenced by what other people are doing," said Olivia Santa Cruz, an architecture freshman.

Before the media campaign began, the university's alcohol-intervention program just worked with students who illegally possessed alcohol. The UA Dean of Students Office referred students to the program.

"We weren't doing it right," Johanessen said.

The surveys show the number of students experiencing the effects of binge drinking -fighting, memory loss and trouble with authorities - have dropped since the new program began.

University Police Department records show that the number of cases for alcohol or drug-related activities and DUI's dropped about 1 percent since 1996.

"It would be nice to attribute the number of arrests for alcohol or drug-related activities to the media campaign," UAPD Chief Harry Hueston II said.

While the UA's program has been used as a model for universities nationwide, the strategy was first developed at Northern Illinois University.

The method has since been implemented at two other universities - Hobart & William Smith Colleges in New York and Western Washington College - all of which report the same decrease in binge drinking.

"The basic strategy is preventative care," DeArmond said.

Stephanie Corns can be reached via e-mail at Stephanie.Corns@wildcat.arizona.edu.