Holy God, we offer thanks for the vision of Samuel Shoemaker, priest and co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and we pray that we may follow his example to help others find salvation through knowledge and love of Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Almost one in 10 sports fans has a blood alcohol content above the legal limit as they exit the stadium after football and baseball games, a study found.

There are 100 stadiums in the U.S. that schedule 5,000 games each year attended by more than 130 million fans, according to a report today in the journal Alcoholism. The New Meadowlands stadium, where the New York Giants football team plays, has a capacity of 82,500. If this study holds, about 6,600 people, or 8 percent, leave drunk after watching a game.

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There has been a lot of speculation about whether Jared Lee Loughner, the man arrested for the Arizona shooting, has a severe mental illness. But is mental illness a sufficient explanation for his actions? Recent research has found that mental illness is, in fact, tied to an increased risk of violence””but it is not a simple relationship….

…the vast majority of patients with severe mental illness are not violent during their lifetimes. The largest and longest study of schizophrenia and violence, conducted in Sweden over the course of 30 years, found that only 13% of patients had violent convictions after receiving their diagnoses. For most patients, the risk of becoming a victim of violence is higher than the risk that they will commit violence.

Nor should we make the mistake of assuming that a correlation between mental illness and violence somehow establishes a causal connection between them. It may be that schizophrenia is simply a marker for other factors that increase the risk of violence. Of these factors, one of the strongest is alcohol and drug abuse. Estimates from the U.S. indicate that around half of patients with schizophrenia also have problems with substance abuse. One study in American urban centers found that nearly a third of patients who were discharged from the hospital and also diagnosed with substance abuse were violent within one year.

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Two decades after declaring victory in the war over biblical inerrancy, Southern Baptists are battling about booze.

Seeking to remain relevant in today’s culture, many Baptists have abandoned former taboos against social activities like dancing and going to movies. Now some are questioning the denomination’s historic position of abstaining from alcohol, prompting others to draw a line.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina recently passed a motion to “study a policy of the social use of alcohol” related to funding of church plants, employment of personnel and nomination of persons to committees and boards of trustees.

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For teenagers, friends play a big role in the decision to take that first drink. And by the 12th grade, more than 65 percent of teens have at least experimented with alcohol. But what parents do during the high school years can also influence whether teens go on to binge drink or abuse alcohol. Researchers at Brigham Young University have found that teenagers who grow up with parents who are either too strict or too indulgent tend to binge drink more than their peers.

“While parents didn’t have much of an effect on whether their teens tried alcohol, they can have a significant impact on the more dangerous type of drinking,” says Stephen Bahr, a professor of sociology at BYU, and the author of the study that was published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

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A new report out today from the National Institute of Drug Abuse shows teenage drug use is up, especially among eighth-graders, the primary culprits: marijuana, ecstasy, and prescription drugs. Teenagers are also now less likely to believe that marijuana use is dangerous.

At the same time, previously reported declines in cigarette smoking have stalled. There was some good news. The rate of binge drinking, consuming five or more alcoholic drinks in a row, is down.

Here to discuss the findings is Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

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October has been a bad month for college towns.

On Oct. 2, a raid by New Haven, Conn., police to break up a party by Yale University students led to claims of police brutality and excessive force.

One week later, a party by Penn State University students turned violent when a fight between two women spilled out onto the streets of State College, leaving two students with stab wounds.

Last week, Pace University football player Danroy “DJ” Henry was shot and killed by police outside a popular eatery frequented by students from the nearby Pace campus.

What they have in common is alcohol ”” a common component in encounters between police and college students that can fuel tensions.

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When the going gets tough, the tough, um, go drinking. That’s the word from a new Gallup poll showing that 67% of Americans are hitting the bottle, the most since 1985. Another sign of challenging economic times: more and more of those rounds are happening in the kitchen, not at the corner pub.

A new report by Mintel International, a market-research firm, shows that a growing number of Americans are guzzling down wine and spirits at home as opposed to in bars and restaurants, and many are trading down to cheaper brands as they seek fiscally conscious ways to party in a sluggish economy.

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Meeting in Gisborne today, the Anglican General Synod invited Professor Doug Sellman from the National Addiction Centre to speak about binge drinking culture.

He put forward a number of solutions to deal with the issue: raising alcohol prices, raising the purchase age, reducing the accessibility to alcohol, reducing marketing and advertising, increasing drink-driving countermeasures and increasing treatment opportunities for heavy drinkers.

“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change the way we regulate alcohol in society. It is a national crisis and way of life, and you have a role to address what science tells us what needs to be treated as a Class B drug,” he said.

The Synod today backed Prof Sellman’s proposals, and members also voted to increase their own vigilance of alcohol consumption and to hold each other to account.

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The Anglican Bishop of Auckland, The Right Reverend Ross Bay, has welcomed the Law Commission’s Report “Alcohol in our Lives, Curbing the Harm” presented to Parliament this week.

Bishop Bay has long carried a concern about the negative trends in drinking behaviour among some New Zealanders. He considers that the shift to a lower legal age in 1999 has been a big factor in the growing youth alcohol problem. He is supportive of the legal drinking age returning to 20 years.

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Over the course of the election campaign, the Today programme will be investigating the big trends in British society over the past 13 years, and how the trends have influenced the choices that politicians have made on our behalf.

In the first in a series of reports, John Humphrys visited Cardiff on a Saturday night, to see how the government has attempted to tackle the rise in binge-drinking.

Listen to it all (almost 8 1/2 minutes).