College students, and even high school students, are drinking more than in the past, they are doing it more often and they're doing it to get drunk. The result is more accidents, fatal ones, sexual assault, vandalism, riots, deaths, and lawsuits that inevitably follow. The term Extreme Drinking, or high risk drinking, has steadily emerged as a catchall phrase within the beverage industry, national institutes of health, and university and youth health services to try to define and understand these recent and dangerous trends among youth drinking habits.
Swimming with Crocodiles, the ninth volume in the ICAP Series on Alcohol in Society, explores the issues surrounding the extreme drinking culture across cultures. Drawing from a series of international focus groups conducted in 2005 in Brazil, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Russia, South Africa, and the UK, this volume considers cross-cultural perspectives on extreme drinking, from historical perspectives and motivation tolessons learned. Particular attention is paid to the various roles of government, the beverage alcohol industry, social institutions, and public health organizations, and how each can take steps in policy and practice towards harm reduction. Best practices for intervention and prevention measures for education and harm reduction are discussed, as are the implications of existing policies and proposed steps to be taken in the future. As with other books in the ICAP series, the issues covered are relevant to those working within and with the beverage alcohol industry, with an emphasis on increasing awareness, developing new partnerships and moving toward shared responsibility.
