I am writing about the advertisement from University Health Services in Thursday's Daily Collegian that said, "2 out of 3 Penn State students don't drink so much they forget what they did."

Assuming that the statistics are correct, and they were taken from a representative sample of the student population, that means that one out of three (about 13,000) Penn State students drink so much that they experience blackouts. This does not even address the number of students breaking the law by drinking underage.

As a worker in the drug and alcohol field, I find these numbers staggeringly high and evidence of widespread alcohol abuse. I understand wanting to tell students that not everyone abuses alcohol, but this still demonstrates a huge problem, both in fact and perception.

While I applaud the efforts of the university and the community in education and law enforcement, it is clear that we all have a long way to go in preventing injuries and deaths from alcohol use. On top of this, there was a letter, "Blaming deaths on alcohol illogical of PSU spokesman,"Feb. 23, that expressed outrage that a university official would dare claim that alcohol is the problem.

Alcohol itself may not kill people, but irresponsible and at times downright stupid use of alcohol does indeed kill people.