Teens drinking hand sanitizer – though underage drinking is down

Teens drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk is a new trend noticed by California authorities. While overall underage drinking has been going down in the past decade, 72 percent of teens who do report having had an alcoholic drink apparently were able to get it without resorting to the gooey gel. 

|
Donna McWillia/AP/File
In an effort to get drunk, some teens are drinking hand sanitizer, shown here at Texas Star Pharmacy in Plano, Texas, although underage drinking in general is down.

So, just in case you need something else to worry about as the parent of a teenager:

Hand sanitizer.  Yes, that gooey substance that is everywhere these days, from the school bathroom to the entrance at the grocery store, is the latest danger to teens who are – get this – drinking it to become intoxicated.

According to the Los Angeles Times, six teenagers have shown up in two San Fernando Valley emergency rooms in the past few months with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, and while the number of cases is still low, at least one public health official worried about hand sanitizer abuse becoming a dangerous trend. The Times also reported that statewide 60 reports of teens drinking hand sanitizer had been logged by the California Poison Control System since 2010.

Hand sanitizer, which has 62 percent ethyl alcohol, produces a potent drink that can cause alcohol poisoning. Some of the cases involve teenagers who used salt to separate out the alcohol.

There were also 147 cases involving children ages 6 to 12 and 2,180 cases ages 0 to 5, believed to have accidentally ingested the gel, according to poison control service, part of the UC San Francisco's Department of Clinical Pharmacy.

First thought here:  Gross.

Second: Wow. Really sad.

According to the news reports, some of the hospitalized children said they did not drink the hand sanitizer straight out of the bottle, but distilled it to isolate the disinfectant’s ethyl alcohol, leading to a shot that can be three times as alcoholic as vodka.

Of course, consuming or altering household products for a buzz is nothing new (although still blessedly rare, statistically speaking) for teenagers.  Cough medicine, mouthwash, and even vanilla extract have all been targets.

But so has the family liquor cabinet.

And really, we shouldn’t need the shock factor of hand sanitizer aside to worry about underage drinking.

While alcohol use seems to be declining among teens (past-month use declined between 2002 and 2008, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services), nearly three quarters of teens – 72 percent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse – consume alcohol (more than a few sips) by the time they graduate high school; 37 percent have done so by eighth grade.

This, according to pretty much every child health agency, is a huge problem, with implications on everything from later drug abuse to car accidents to neurological development. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics has, fairly predictably, called for increased efforts to prevent and reduce underage drinking.

But this isn’t only parents’ problem, the organization says. A recent survey of adolescents in six European countries found a clear link between exposure to movie portrayals of alcohol and teen binge drinking.

The message was clear: if we actually care about teen alcohol abuse, everyone needs to step up.

Ponder that the next time you reach for the disinfectant.
 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Teens drinking hand sanitizer – though underage drinking is down
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2012/0425/Teens-drinking-hand-sanitizer-though-underage-drinking-is-down
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe