Maryland lawmakers, encouraged by college and university presidents, are currently considering a ban on grain alcohol. The bill has passed the Maryland Senate and needs to pass through the House of Representatives before it can become law.

The Maryland Collaborative is a group of 11 Maryland universities and colleges that, according to its website, “seeks to make a measurable difference in excessive drinking and related harms among college students as a statewide public health problem.” These universities were influential in pushing legislation for the ban.

Dr. Donna Cox, a professor in the College of Health Professions and the co-director of the Alcohol, Tobacco & Other Drug Prevention Center at Towson University, said that grain alcohol specifically is dangerous for college students because of its high alcohol content.

“Grain alcohol is one of the choices that students will use as a way of getting a cheap, effective, efficient buzz,” Cox said.

The ban would affect all grain alcohol that’s at least 190-proof, or 95 percent alcohol.  At least 12 other states already have bans on grain alcohol.

The Maryland Collaborative recently conducted a study that found that about one in five Maryland college students meet criteria for alcohol abuse or dependency.  The study also showed that 83 percent of underage students drink alcohol.

“The purpose of high risk drinking is overall to raise your blood alcohol concentration quickly.  Sometimes students have a lot of different reasons for doing that,” Cox said.

Cox said binge drinking has numerous negative effects for students, such as alcohol poisoning, sexual assault and a decline in GPA. University officials say that grain alcohol is often mixed with fruit juices in “jungle juice” at parties.

If Maryland passes the ban, Cox said they could be signaling to college students that buying grain alcohol to get drunk quickly is unacceptable.

Dr. David Jernigen, an associate professor in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth, said the Collaborative is working on many ways to reduce underage drinking on college campuses.

“There’s no single magic bullet that will solve this problem,” Jernigen said. “There are things we need to do on the campuses, there are things we need to do in the community and there are some things that we may be able to do at the state level that will support what the campuses are trying to do. This bill is an example of one such thing.”

Jernigen is one of a group of representatives slated to testify in a House hearing about the ban. He said that college students and binge drinkers are more likely to have used grain alcohol.

Jernigen said that the reason they’re going after grain alcohol is because they have conducted studies that show college students use grain alcohol more than others. There are a lot of “anecdotes” to prove it, he said.

“We’re concerned about grain alcohol because it is odorless, tasteless and colorless,” he said. “When it’s mixed into a punch, kids don’t know what they’re drinking.”

Cox reiterated that the ban is part of a larger effort to reduce college drinking.

“(We’ll do) whatever it takes to try to reduce access, educate students and, from Towson’s perspective, change a culture,” Cox said.

Published on February 13, 2014 at 1:27 am

Contact: clmoran@syr.edu