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ICR Survey: Majority of Teens (Still) Favor the Legal Drinking Age

Media, PA, [March 30, 2006] -- Nearly two-thirds of teens favor the legal drinking age of 21, according to a poll conducted by ICR of Media, PA. Overall support is down slightly from the same survey conducted nearly 5 years ago in June, 2001.

64% of teens aged 12-17 support the current legal drinking age of 21. That is down 4 points from the survey conducted 5 years ago. 15% of teens in the current poll support raising the legal age limit (down 1 point from 2001) while support for lowering the legal limit has risen 5% from 2001 to 20% of teens surveyed.

Nearly three-fourths (72%) still support enforcing the laws on the legal drinking age more vigorously, down from 76% in 2001. And 85% of teens in the recent poll agreed that using a fake ID to buy alcohol was a serious violation of the law vs. 79% in 2001.

Other Findings:

--When asked what is the most appropriate punishment for young people who break drinking laws, Community service was selected by 39% (up from 34% in 2001) and Suspension of drivers license by 26% (down from 32% in 2001).

-- Teens identified the penalty of losing a drivers license as influencing them most (30%) not to drink. This is followed by Friends (25%), Parents (19%), Alcohol awareness programs at school (13%) and Penalties such as community service (12%).

-- Younger teens (12 to 14 years old) were more likely to think use of a fake ID was a serious offense (90%) than the 81% of older teens (15 to 17 years old).

-- Younger teens were nearly twice as likely as older teens to want to raise the drinking age. And the older teens were nearly twice as likely to want to lower it.

This ICR teen omnibus study was conducted by telephone from February 1 - 5, 2006, among a nationally representative sample of 511 U.S. teens ages 12-17. At a 95% level of confidence, the margin of error for these results is +/- 4.3 percent.

To learn more about ICR, please visit www.icrsurvey.com

ICR, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, Pennsylvania, is a top-ranked and nationally recognized market research organization. ICR provides consulting and research to its clients on a wide range of issues including branding, market segmentation, customer and employee satisfaction, loyalty, advertising, public relations, multicultural and ethnic marketing, social science, public policy, and many others. ICRs family of omnibus services interviews more than 150,000 adults, 6,000 teenagers, 12,000 Hispanics and 6,000 small business owners and operators annually.

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