. " I. Underage Drinking in the United States - 2. Characteristics of Underage Drinking." Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2004.
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Reducing Underage Drinking: A Collective Responsibility
FIGURE 2-1 Past month alcohol use by 12- to 20-year-olds, by race or ethnicity: 1999-2000 annual averages.
SOURCE: NHSDA (2001).
percent) youth aged 12 to 20 have recently used alcohol. When disaggregated by racial and ethnic groups for that age group, whites reported the highest past month use of alcohol (30 percent), followed by American Indians and Alaska natives (28.4 percent), Mexican Americans (25.2 percent), and Puerto Ricans, Central and South Americans, and Cubans (22.9 percent, 22.3 percent, and 22.3 percent, respectively); see Figure 2-1.
Terminology
Multiple data sources—including the NHSDA, (now called the National Survey on Drug Use and Health), the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and MTF—collect extensive information on the frequency and quantity of alcohol consumed (see Chapter 12 for additional discussion of these sur-
