I shared the comments on ethnicity and DUI with some of my colleagues at
the Prevention Research Center, who found them interesting.  Paul
Gruenewald noted that a forthcoming paper by Fred Johnson and colleagues
in
the Journal of Studies on Alcohol did not find a pattern of later
drinking
onset among blacks
[Johnson, F.W.; Gruenewald, P.J.; Treno, A.J.; and Taff, G.A., "Drinking
over the life course within gender and ethnic groups: A hyperparametric
analysis." JSA, in press].
 
Paul also said:
 
"We have published a paper [Gruenewald, P.J.; Mitchell, P.R.; and Treno,
A.J. (1996), "Drinking and driving: Drinking patterns and drinking
problems," Addiction, 91(11):1637-1649] that shows that black and
hispanic
drinking driving is relatively infrequent when compared to white driving
after drinking, and that this is largely due to (a) differences in
drinking
patterns (white drinking most frequently) and (b) preferential use of
different drinking venues among some drinkers (e.g., bars and
restaurants).
 
The economic efficiency argument we have already made (and demonstrated
to
be true) in an earlier paper in the literature [Gruenewald, P.J.; Treno,
A.J.; Nephew, T.M.; and Ponicki, W.R. (1995), "Routine activities and
alcohol use: Constraints on outlet utilization," Alcoholism: Clinical
and
Experimental Research, 19(1):44-53].  There we show that more frequent
drinkers do conserve costs by drinking more at home.  But, nevertheless,
heavier drinkers (those who drink more per occasion) are more likely to
drink outside the home (and therefore drink and drive) (in another paper
to
be submitted later this year).
 
Please note that all these observations net out income and other
time-energy budget effects (so the basic economic argument proposed by
the
ATHG members is without much force; there are economic effects but they
are
not all-encompassing).
 
It should be noted that statistically controlling for income and
time-energy budgets is an essential step in interpreting these data (see
references above).  Without such controls basic cross-tabs wildly
exaggerate differences between ethnic groups."