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College Drinking: Consumption and Harm

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Prevention Paradox

The relationship between heavier individual alcohol consumption and harm is very stable over time and across different groups of college students. However, at a community level , students who drink at the 5/4 level and below do pose a major public health problem at colleges because:

  • Even relatively low levels of blood alcohol concentration are associated with increased risk of injury and death in motor vehicle crashes (Wechsler and Nelson, 2008);
  • There are many more students who drink at that level.

In fact, many more students report they were hurt or injured at lower, rather than higher, levels of consumption.

This is known as the Prevention Paradox - the heaviest drinkers (those at "high risk") account for only a small percentage of the overall alcohol-related harms in a community. The majority of harms at the community level occur among drinkers consuming at a less extreme level associated with a lower, but non-zero level of risk (Weitzman and Nelson, 2004).

PartySafe@Cal is a program of University Health Services in collaboration with other campus and community organizations.
The mission is to reduce harm associated with drinking in the campus area.
To volunteer or for more information call 510-642-7202 or email hp@uhs.berkeley.edu.