Washington ? Nearly one-third of high school students say they binge drink at least once a month, according to a new report by an advocacy group. The government estimates underage drinkers account for 11.4 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States.

“Underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions in America,” said Joseph Califano Jr., president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, which issued the report Tuesday.

The report, which analyzes two years’ research, “is a clarion call for national mobilization to curb underage drinking,” said Califano, a former U.S. secretary of health, education and welfare.

Califano’s group also asserted that young people between the ages of 12 and 20 accounted for 25 percent of all alcoholic beverages consumed in the United States.

That contention prompted the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the government agency that conducted the 1998 survey cited by Califano’s group, to issue a statement saying underage drinkers account for 11.4 percent of U.S. alcohol consumption.

“Regardless of any discrepancies … any alcohol use before age 21 is unacceptable and against the law,” said the agency, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Industry denies figures

Citing the government figures, the alcoholic beverage industry accused Califano’s group of falsifying its numbers.

“It looks like Mr. Califano and CASA have adopted Enron’s accounting practices,” said Phil Lynch, a spokesman for Brown-Forman Corp., whose products include Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey.

Frank Coleman, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, called Califano “a serial abuser of statistics for sensational purposes.”

Both the government and CASA percentages were based on a 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse in which 25,500 people, including 9,759 between the ages of 12 and 20 were questioned in their homes.

While the 12-20 age group represented 38 percent of those surveyed, they account for about only 13 percent of the total U.S. population, according to 2000 Census Bureau figures. The government says it weighted its survey results to account for the age discrepancy between its survey sample and the total population.

Califano, in an interview Tuesday, defended his group’s decision not to make that adjustment.

New statistics show

“The household survey is taken by going into a home and asking parents if you can talk to their children. If parents are in the living room and you (the surveyor and the teen) are in the kitchen, the odds of getting a really solid answer are slim. So there’s a tremendous underestimate in reporting,” Califano said.

Some of the CASA report’s findings:

 Eighty-seven percent of adults who drink had their first drink before age 21.

 The gender gap for drinking is disappearing. Female ninth-graders were just as likely to be drinkers as male ninth-graders.

 Eighty-one percent of high school students have consumed alcohol, compared with 70 percent who have smoked cigarettes and 47 percent who have used marijuana.

 Most teens who experiment with alcohol continue using it. Among high school seniors who had tried alcohol, 91.3 percent still were drinking in the 12th grade.

The percentage of teens who drink in binges  31 percent among high school students  was obtained by using the Youth Risk Behavior Survey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, published in 2000.

Binge drinking often is described as four consecutive drinks for a woman or five drinks for a man. According to an American Medical Assn. survey last year, binge drinking is among parents’ top worries. Around 44 percent of college students admit to binge drinking, and nearly a fourth of those binge frequently.