Abstract

College athletes consume alcohol more frequently than nonathlete students and also binge drink more frequently. This discrepancy exists between athletes and nonathletes despite frequent exposure to alcohol prevention attempts and highly motivating factors to discourage alcohol consumption by athletes. These findings were reported in a study of randomly chosen college students from 4-year academic institutions in the United States. In this study, binge drinking was defined as five or more drinks at a time during a 2-week period for men; four or more for women. Students were classified as athletes if they were involved in 1 or more hours of intercollegiate sports each day. The authors concluded that binge drinking and drinking-related harms are common among college athletes.