Acute and chronic health problems
As alcohol-related diseases such as liver cirrhosis, cancers and heart disease take time to develop; chronic effects resulting directly from alcohol misuse are rarely seen among young people. Thus it is the shorter-term acute effects of alcohol consumption that are more evident in this population. In particular, acute intoxication can occur rapidly and by surprise in children and young people which is probably due to a combination of physiological factors (e.g. limited ability to metabolise alcohol and lower body weight) and socio-cultural reasons (including a lack of experience of the effects of alcohol and drinking in unsupervised contexts). The most common impacts of alcohol intoxication are vomiting ( 60% of children hospitalized for alcohol use) and coma, which in cold environments can result in fatal hypothermia .

Acute health problems
Newburn and Shiner (2001) report that it is highly likely that children’s inexperience of the effects of alcohol intoxication, and the fact that they are more likely to consume alcohol in ‘risky’ environments brings with it an increased risk of accidents and need for hospitalisation . Alcohol use may be a significant contributor to injury in
adolescence and may play a role in more than 50% of traumatic brain injuries in adolescents. Alcohol use was also linked to 80% of adolescent deaths from homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries and to an increased risk of illness and death at an early age, predominantly caused by suicide and violent accidents. Irwin and Millstein (1986) reported that adolescents who were involved in drowning, falls and burns had a greater frequency of blood alcohol levels over 0.10% . It should be noted that reviews in this area are often unclear as to whether hospital presentations relate to acute alcohol effects such as alcohol poisoning, to the consequences of drinking, such as injury or to chronic conditions although the latter are rare in young people20% of young people admitted to hospital for alcohol intoxication. This high risk group consisted of mostly boys from lower socio-economic status groups, who before the acute episode of drunkenness had shown signs of ‘psychiatric insufficiency’, or extreme shyness and a retiring disposition, or restlessness, impulsiveness and aggressive behaviour
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Such individuals often had difficulties in social adjustment, including problems at school. These children had also been brought up in homes characterized by insecurity, broken families with only one parent (who was often an ‘exhausted’ mother), with an alcoholic or a mentally disturbed parent or in a home marked by disorganization with few good emotional relations. It was also reported that the children had been using alcohol before the acute episode (no information given on use). They were often apprehended on a week day and neither they themselves nor their parents showed notable anxiety reaction with regard to the admission to hospital. This review concluded that in this ‘high risk’ group of children the acute episode of alcohol intoxication was a warning signal for future problems. This compares to a low-risk group (comprising about 50-55%) of cases that would be seen as healthy children from a psychiatric point of view, from secure homes that have shown no previous signs of social maladjustment. They are generally admitted to hospital on a Friday or Saturday night and both they themselves and their parents show anxiety reactions in connection with the event

The current review found very little evidence relating to liver disease in young
people. Saunders and Bailey (1993) reported that the overwhelming majority of deaths from liver disease occur in the over 21’s . Moreover, Clark et al. (2002) reported that serum liver enzymes were typically only modestly elevated in adolescents with alcohol problems. However, Zeigler et al. (2005) later found that serum enzymatic markers of liver damage were elevated in alcohol-abusing adolescents . Whilst there is great inter-individual variability in susceptibility to alcohol-related liver disease, two notable risk factors are the dose of alcohol consumed and the length of time of heavy drinking . Deaths from alcoholic hepatitis or decompensated cirrhosis are rare in patients under 25, but when these
deaths do occur, they are as a result of several years of heavy drinking . Thus although there is no direct evidence that adolescent livers are more susceptible to alcohol than adult livers, the consequences of heavy drinking in adolescence are now being seen in early adulthood with devastating consequences
Source: Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Young People: A Review of Reviews Oct.2008