Our data show that prevalence of regular alcohol use among young
children was very low. Interestingly, more than one-third of these children
had already experimented with alcohol at the time of the study, grades
three through six. Sixty-five percent of the children reported never having
tried alcohol, and more than 30% said they had tasted alcohol. This accounts
for almost the entire sample, and obviously the children who had
tried alcohol by the time of the study were experimenters, which provided
a strong rationale for using two categories for analyses, never having and
ever having tried alcohol.