Teen Drug Help
Teen Drinking May Lead to Irreversible Brain Damage
A recent study led by a University of California, San Diego neuroscientist suggests that teen drinking may lead to irreversible brain damage.
Susan Tapert and colleagues compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don't. They found that teens who drink heavily sustain damage to brain nerve tissue, which negatively affects attention span in boys and the ability to comprehend and interpret visual information in girls.
Tapert commented on the findings: "First of all, the adolescent brain is still undergoing several maturational processes that render it more vulnerable to some of the effects of substances.
"For girls who had been engaging in heavy drinking during adolescence, it looks like they're performing more poorly on tests of spatial functioning, which links to mathematics, engineering kinds of functions.
"For boys who engaged in binge drinking during adolescence, we see poor performance on tests of attention -- so being able to focus on something that might be somewhat boring, for a sustained period of time."
For the study, the researchers looked at 12- to 14-year-olds before they used drugs or alcohol. Over time, some of the teens began drinking, a few rather heavily. Tapert's team compared those who began drinking with those who did not, and found that the binge drinkers performed significantly worse on cognitive tests.
Tapert explains that the result actually surprised her: "These results were actually surprising to me because the binge drinking kids hadn't, in fact, engaged in a great deal of binge drinking. They were drinking on average once or twice a month, but when they did drink, it was to a relatively high quantity of at least four or five drinks an occasion."
(Source: www.wbur.org)
Labels: binge drinking, brain damage, teen drinking
High Rates of Teen Drinking in Washington State, Surveys Say
According to the national Monitoring the Future Survey, 11 percent of high school seniors reported "extreme binge drinking" within the two weeks prior to the survey. Extreme binge drinking is defined as consuming 10 or more alcoholic beverages in a single sitting. Approximately 6 percent reported consuming more than 15 drinks in a row in the two weeks prior to the survey.
The Washington State Healthy Youth Survey reported similar findings. The 2008 state survey found that almost 18 percent of 10th graders are binge drinkers, which is a higher percentage than those that are cigarette smokers (14 percent). Among Washington State 8th graders, 41 percent who drink reported getting alcohol from home and 24 percent reported that their parents have not talked to them about alcohol and its risks.
David Dickinson, director of the Department of Social and Health Services Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR), commented: "Underage drinking, especially binge drinking, is extremely risky, with alcohol poisoning being a potentially fatal outcome. Alcohol causes great harm to the developing teen brain. Teens who drink are more likely to become pregnant, fail in school, and develop alcohol dependence.
"Parents who give kids the facts about alcohol, set healthy examples, and never give alcohol to someone under 21, have the most influence in preventing underage drinking."
(Source: www.dhs.wa.gov)
Labels: alcohol, binge drinking, underage-drinking
Florida Survey Highlights Need for Increased Anti-Drug Efforts
Although the results of Florida's 2009 Youth Substance Abuse Survey were largely positive, binge drinking, marijuana use and prescription drug use remain areas of concern. Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp announced this week that the survey showed long-term reductions in drug use among middle and high school students and attributes the reductions to the success of prevention efforts.
Kottkamp reinforced the importance of the survey as a tool to track a serious threat: "Drug use threatens the health and safety of our children and their families. Children are Florida's most vulnerable residents and protecting them from the dangers of substance abuse remains a high priority. The survey is a critical tool in the effort to prevent drug use."
Alcohol use has declined steadily since 2000, but the rate of alcohol use among Florida's students continues to exceed national figures.
Bruce Grant, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control, commented: "The results of the survey show the success of our prevention efforts over time. Yet, we still have our work cut out for us to reduce youth use of inhalants, marijuana and prescription drugs. Overall, underage drinking remains the most significant challenge we face."
(Source: www.thegovmonitor.com)
Labels: binge drinking, drug-use, marijuana, prescription drugs
Oregon Police Hope to Curb Drinking Among Middle School Students
Police in Ashland, Ore., are hoping to curb drinking among middle school students by giving presentations to area students on the consequences of alcohol abuse.
Lt. Corey Falls, a local police official, commented on the effort: "I think our No. 1 concern is the binge drinking. The earlier that kids start drinking, the worse that it becomes."
Falls reports that binge drinking is the most common problem that area police officers encounter when dealing with teens and alcohol. Binge drinking is also associated with alcohol poisoning and sexual assaults among teens in Ashland, according to Falls.
"Those are some of the extremes that we see from binge drinking," he said.
In 2007, Ashland police issued 244 citations to minors for being in possession of alcohol; 87 of these citations were given to teens under the age of 18. At the end of October, this year, police had issued 154 citations to minors, 30 of these to juveniles.
(Source: www.dailytidings.com)
Labels: alcohol, binge drinking, drinking
Ontario Teens: Fewer Are Drinking but Other Substance Use Behaviors Remain Steady
According to a new study by the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), fewer Ontario teenagers are drinking alcohol than a decade ago. However, binge drinking and use of marijuana haven't declined in recent years.
In 2009, approximately 58 percent of students in grades 7 to 12 reported drinking within the last year – a decrease of 8 percent since 1999. However, levels of pot use and binge drinking have remained steady since 2007. About one-fourth of Ontario teens reported binge drinking within one month of the survey, and one-fourth reported using marijuana within the past year.
Study co-author Robert Mann, a senior researcher on substance abuse at CAMH, commented on the results: "If you look over the past decade, you see a lot of decline of things like drinking, smoking, use of the harder drugs. That seems to stop this year. We're concerned that the declines appear to have slowed down or stopped and it's unclear what's going to happen next."
(Source: www.theglobeandmail.com)
Labels: alcohol, binge drinking, marijuana
Boys in High School Sports More Likely to Fight, Drink
A new study indicates that teenage boys involved in high school team sports are more likely to fight and binge drink than their peers who are not. The study also indicates that teenage boys involved in team sports are less likely to get depressed or smoke. Male high school athletes were found to be 1.4 times more likely to binge drink and 1.3 times more likely to fight.
The results come from a study conducted by Ohio's Injury Prevention Center, Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital. Researchers presented the results this week at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting and emphasized that team sports participation can have "protective and risk-enhancing" effects on high school students.
Researcher Susan Connor commented: "There is a lot of rhetoric that promotes sports team participation as a complete positive -- something that has no negative effects. Sports participation is kind of almost rhetorically positioned as a panacea for social ills; it will stop crime and alcohol and drug use.
"But all the bits and pieces of evidence suggest that's not really true. Our hypothesis was that sports team participation would not be overwhelmingly positive but it would have positive and negative effects, which is just what we found."
(Source: www.reuters.com)
Labels: binge drinking, sports, violence
Alcohol Abuse Decreases at Sacramento State University
Since 2006, liquor law violations at Sacramento State University have decreased. Violations have also decreased throughout the California State University (CSU) system.
According to the fourth biennial report on CSU's Alcohol Policies and Prevention programs, the overall number of students abusing alcohol has declined since the University first initiated alcohol abuse prevention efforts in 2001.
CSU's alcohol policies and prevention programs require each campus in the CSU system to report the status and progress of alcohol education and prevention efforts every two years. The goal is to decrease and prevent alcohol-related incidents among students, including drunk driving, underage drinking, binge drinking, and alcohol-related injuries and fatalities.
Cyndra Krogen-Morton, professional staff and health educator of Sacramento State's Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Education Program, commented on the encouraging trend: "I am very excited about it. We have been working hard with the law enforcement and Alcoholic Beverage Control. I'm happy that the chancellor's efforts are paying off."
(Source: media.www.statehornet.com)
Labels: alcohol, binge drinking, college-drinking, substance use, underage-drinking
Prevention Program Cuts Teen Binge Drinking by 1/3
The rate of teen binge drinking decreased by 37 percent among eighth grade students in seven states that implemented a prevention system to reduce drug use and delinquent behavior.
These findings come from the Community Youth Development Study that compares teenagers living in 12 pairs of small to moderate-sized towns in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Oregon, Utah and Washington.
The study, which tracks the behavior of more than 4,400 students over five years, is a randomized trial of a prevention program system known as Communities That Care. The system was developed by J. David Hawkins and Richard Catalano of the University of Washington's Social Development Research Group. Hawkins and Catalano designed the system specifically to lower rates of delinquent behavior and drug use, and to promote healthy behaviors.
Hawkins commented on the most recent findings: "This study shows we can prevent adolescent risk behaviors community wide by using this system.
"The most dramatic finding concerned binge drinking. We asked youngsters if they had consumed five or more drinks of alcohol in one sitting in the past two weeks. We know kids who drink that way are at risk for developing alcohol abuse and dependence later. This binge drinking is occurring when children are 13 and 14 years of age, so we are actually preventing the likelihood of later alcohol problems. This is very important from a public health standpoint."
Researchers found that about 5.7 percent of eighth graders in communities that implemented the prevention system engaged in binge drinking within the last two weeks, compared with 9 percent of eighth graders in communities that did not use the system.
The study also found that youth in the communities using the Communities That Care system were significantly less likely to begin smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol or committing delinquent acts between the fifth and eighth grades.
(Source: www.eurekalert.org)
Labels: binge drinking, prevention program
