New findings released Tuesday indicate a strong relationship between “casual” or nondaily smoking and binge drinking in young adults.

The study was conducted by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and involved a survey of 43,000 young adults, 5,800 of whom were between the ages of 18 and 24.

The purpose of the survey was to examine different types of smoking behaviors in conjunction with hazardous drinking. According to the study, casual smokers were 16 times more likely to participate in hazardous drinking than nonsmokers and were five times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder.

The study showed consistent results among groups varying in age, race, gender, education level and marital status.

“Not one group stood out amongst the others — these associations cut across everybody,” said Sherry McKee, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, where the study was developed.

Casual smokers are a growing subpopulation among smokers at large.

“The nondaily smoker is at a higher risk, and I think that it’s because the two behaviors are so highly tied to each other for a nondaily smoker in that they often smoke only when they are drinking,” McKee said.

Maureen Busalacchi, executive director of SmokeFree Wisconsin, said some people think if they smoke only under certain circumstances, they aren’t actual smokers.

“These people are really misinformed,” Busalacchi said. “These people aren’t really owning up to their addiction.”

According to Susan Crowley, Prevention Services and Community Relations director at UW’s University Health Services, binge drinking and smoking are prevalent on the UW campus with rates of 67 percent and 23 percent of students reporting the behaviors, respectively.

“I think our observation would be to say that there is a correlation between those two,” Crowley said.

As recently as last week, SmokeFree Wisconsin worked with the Dane County Board to pass an ordinance mandating that all Dane County businesses will be smoke free by August 2009.

This development came in addition to the smoking bans already enforced in campus buildings and dorms as well as in the city of Madison itself.

Busalacchi said officials also work to combat smoking on an individual, case-by-case basis, often through the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line.

“Quit Line is a good resource because the help given addresses both the physical addiction and its emotional trigger,” she said.

However, few policies focus on the relationship between smoking and drinking. Through the study, McKee said she hopes “policies will work to highlight the association between nondaily smoking and misuse; an example would be to put smoking bans in bars.”

According to McKee, it is necessary to shed light on this issue because it is one that people have not paid much consideration to in the past.

“The safest thing to say at this point is the mechanisms by which nondaily smoking confers with alcohol misuse is not being highly studied and there is a lot more work to be done here,” McKee said.