Nearly 23% of Illinois high school students say they drink, according to report

Lisa Schencker, Chicago Tribune on Dec 15, 2025

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Nearly 23% of Illinois high school students said they drank alcohol within the last 30 days when surveyed in 2021, according to a report released Monday by the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Nearly 12% of the teens acknowledged binge drinking – consuming four to five drinks within a couple hours time.

The findings are part of a new, first-time report released Monday by the Illinois Department of Public Health that reveals a comprehensive view of alcohol use across the state.

“This report provides the most detailed picture to date of how alcohol use and misuse affect the health and safety of Illinois residents,” said Dr. Sameer Vohra, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, in a news release. He called the report a “critical foundation” for a “more informed, coordinated response” to alcohol misuse in Illinois. The report also examined drinking by adults, pregnant women, deaths in alcohol-related vehicle crashes and the prevalence of diseases caused by alcohol.

The statistics about teen drinking in Illinois raise “red flags,” said Cole Forbes, an applied epidemiology fellow at the state health department.

“I think it’s going to really start soundTeenage drinking is a serious concern not just in Illinois, but across the nation, ing some alarms,” Forbes said, noting that increased drinking is tied to other risky behaviors such as sex and driving under the influence. The report raises questions, Forbes said, such as, “What is the prevention work we can get into and who’s going to be a part of that?”

Teenage drinking is a serious concern not just in Illinois, but across the nation, said Subhash Pandey, a psychiatry professor and director of the Alcohol Research Center at University of Illinois Chicago.

“This is a very critical window for brain development and maturation and if someone is exposing the brain to (alcohol) it has consequences on brain development,” Pandey said.

Among Illinois teens, girls were more likely to say they drank and binge drank than boys, according to the report. Higher percentages of white teens said they drank, compared with Black and Latinx teens. About 27% of white teens reported drinking, compared with about 15.9% of Black teens and 22.5% of Latinx teens.

The data came from surveys administered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention every two years to a sample of ninth-graders through 12th-graders.

The report also looked at drinking by Illinois adults, with nearly 56% of adults saying in 2023 that they’d had a drink the last 30 days. About 18% of adults said they binge drank, and 5.3% reported heavy drinking, defined as more than 15 drinks a week for men and more than eight drinks a week for women, according to the state health department.

People with higher incomes drank more than people with lower incomes, according to the report. About 69% of Illinois residents with incomes of $75,000 or more a year reported drinking during the previous 30 days in 2023, compared with 49.2% of those earning $35,000 to $50,000 a year, and 35.1% of people who made less than $15,000 a year.

The percentage of people killed in Illinois in vehicle accidents where alcohol was involved rose between 2019 and 2022. In 2022, 37% of fatal crashes involved a driver with a blood alcohol concentration of at least .01, up from 33% in 2019.

Between 2020 and 2023, more than 2,300 Illinois residents died from illnesses caused by alcohol use, including alcoholic liver disease, alcohol dependency syndrome, excessive alcohol use and alcohol psychosis.

The report also noted that, in 2024, alcohol-related issues were the leading reason people called the Illinois Helpline, a free hotline that connects people with treatment for substance use disorders and problem gambling.

“This highlights a critical need for increased resources, data collection, and targeted community interventions to address the growing health threat alcohol use poses to Illinois communities,” according to the report.

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