Dr. Michael French and his colleagues used four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to study patterns of alcohol use and crime from adolescence to early adulthood. They found alcohol may be as important a risk factor as drugs for criminal involvement.

“This issue is extremely important because adolescents who are criminally active are significantly more likely to be adult criminals,” Dr. French said. “Although adolescents often commit less serious crimes than adults – for example, vandalism and shoplifting – these behaviors can quickly escalate into a criminally active lifestyle without effective interventions. Understanding how alcohol use among adolescents may contribute to criminal activity is therefore a logical policy and relevant area for research.”

“… Educators, parents, clinicians, and others who interact with adolescents can use these findings as an incentive to be vigilant about underage alcohol use as this behavior could be linked with current criminal activities or at least a precursor to future illegal acts,” he said. “Early intervention is probably the best defense in this case.”

This article was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Teenage alcohol abuse is a national public health problem. People under age 20 years old consume over 11% of all alcohol in the United States, even though in most states it is illegal for them to drink. According to 2009 statistics compiled by the federal government, in any month 42% of high school students report drinking at least once; 24% drank at least four drinks in a row; 10% operated an automobile after consuming alcohol; and 28% were passengers in a car driven by someone who had consumed alcohol.

But kids are smart and are finding new ways to get high from a practice of which their parents might not yet be aware. Looking for drugs in their dresser drawers and closets and smelling their breath or clothing will not likely help to find this newer practice. The Choking Game, also known as Pass Out, the Fainting Game, and Space Monkey, is when a person cuts off the supply of blood and oxygen to the brain to induce a high sensation.

According to a Texas university study, 1 in 7 college students have played the Choking Game in order to get high. Unfortunately, those who play this game sometimes accidentally kill themselves or their friends.

Easy to Play, Easy to Lose

It’s easy to play the Choking Game, but the losses are tragic. There are no monetary costs for drugs, no illegal purchases. Game "pieces" include simple things like rope, string, ties, or plastic bags.

A person can play the game alone or with others. Players tie ropes, neck ties, or whatever they can around their neck and tighten it until the person loses consciousness. Other players place plastic bags over their heads to cut off their supply of oxygen.

Researchers from Sam Houston State University’s Crime Victims’ Institute conducted a survey on the practice of "Choking." Out of 837 students, they found these statistics:

• First-time players’ average age was 14
• More males played it than females
• 16 percent had played the game at least once, three-fourths twice or more
• Most students began playing it in a group

It’s Not Suicide

Children and young adults who play these games are often unaware of the tragic dangers of this game. At an age where they sometimes feel invincible to death, these kids are shocked when a friend or sibling dies from accidental strangulation.

Child psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Shapiro, believes that some of these fatalities may have previously been misidentified as suicides. Because children use ropes, ties, and other objects to strangle themselves into unconsciousness, it looks as though they were attempting to take their own lives.

Prevention

Awareness of this problem is key in helping parents and teachers educate youth about the dangers of this game. A survey revealed that 90 percent of parents believe that school health classes should educate students about the dangers of this game.

Parents can watch for these warning signs in their child:

• Bruises or marks on child’s neck
• Frequent headaches
• Bloodshot eyes
• Collecting ropes or plastic bags

One mother whose child died from choking has started her own website for prevention. She noticed that there were hardly any Internet sites that talk about this dangerous game. She hopes her website will help educate parents about choking and help them identify warning signs so they can prevent any tragedies in their own family.

This is also the age when most young adults will have their first experience in relation to drugs or alcohol. They might see friends using substances and decide to engage or not engage. It is a challenging time of making the best decisions they can for their mind and body.

Couple this with the fact that researchers have found that a teen’s decision-making part of the brain may be compromised once they begin using these drugs. The part of their young brains associated with rewards makes them more susceptible to forming an addiction than it does an adult.

Professor of neuroscience in Pitt University’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, Bita Moghaddam, led the study that was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. She was aided by coauthor David Sturman, a MD/PhD student in Pitt’s Medical Scientist Training Program.

Moghaddam and Sturman studied brain activity related to reward, motivation, forming habits, and decision-making in adult and adolescent rats. Using a method named "behavioral clamping", the researchers implanted electrodes into the brains of both adolescent and adult and rats to study whether neuron activity would cause the subjects to process identical behavior differently.

When anticipating a reward, adolescent rats had increased activity in a part of the brain called the dorsal striatum (DS). The DS in the adult rats was not increased. This distinction between adolescent and adult brain reactions is crucial in the different ways adults and youth may react to addiction because of the significance of the role of the DS. The DS is an area associated with forming habits, making decisions, and motivated learning.

Researchers reported that adults and adolescents had similar brain reactions in the nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain most often associated with reward and motivation. Moghaddam is anxious to continue research on how adolescent brains are motivated by rewards, form decisions, and influence the formation of habits.

Moghaddam is concerned about the implications from Pitt’s findings. If adolescents’ brains are more sensitive to reward anticipation than in adults, then this anticipation can directly affect the part of the brain responsible for making decisions and forming habits.

Moghaddam stresses that more research needs to be done to help adolescents avoid addiction to stimulants. His team plans to continue their research and hopes to develop prevention strategies for young adults based on their studies.

IMAGEN -An Ongoing Teen Study

A European study being conducted at multiple sites is an ongoing study of over 2,000 teenagers using genetic neuroimaging (MRI) to determine why some kids are drawn to risk-taking behaviors and whether such a tendency may be linked to substance abuse. The study, called the IMAGEN project has already made some interesting discoveries. For example, an MRI study which examined 266 adolescents who enjoy high-risk activities but have no reported substance abuse issues at present, found a lower bilateral activation of certain reward centers in the brain. The participants were given a task (Cambridge Gamble Task) specially designed to create an anticipation of reward. Researchers discovered that markedly higher risk scores corresponded to notably lower activity in the left ventral striatum – a reward center in the brain.

The IMAGEN study findings most recently published compared 14 year olds without substance abuse issues to other 14 year olds who were classified as potentially problematic substance users. The term potentially problematic meant that the teens were either habitual smokers, had risk factors for alcohol abuse or had already tried illicit substances such as marijuana, cocaine, or heroin among others. The teen groups were made up almost equally of male and female participants to rule out gender influences.

Teens May Be Seeking to Kick-Start the Brain’s Reward Center

Data points to a predilection for risk-taking activities and drug abuse as both are having connection to reduced activity in a teen’s neural reward center. This means that it is likely that teens who engage in high risk behaviors may be attempting to stimulate more activity in their brain’s reward system. Past research bears out the link between risk-taking, addiction and reduced responsiveness in the reward centers of the brain. Teens with a lethargic reward activation could be far more vulnerable to activities which offer short-term euphoria – activities like taking psychotropic drugs for example.

The study goes a long way toward making a teen’s propensity for risk-taking to being a vulnerability factor in predicting whether a teen will go on to abuse substances at some point in the future. Follow-up studies are being planned which should give data at the point of young adulthood that could verify these current findings. For the present, parents of teens who tend toward high-risk behaviors should be warned of the potential link to substance abuse and can be encouraged to direct their teen toward healthy and positive outlets for their reward stimulation. High adventure sports or even traveling to exotic locales may satisfy the teens’ craving.

How K2 and K3 Differ

Although K3 is made up of different chemicals than K2, the effects and dangers are largely the same. In the past few years, hospitals and poison control centers have sounded the alarms about fake pot products, warning of dangerous side effects such as extreme anxiety, elevated heart rate and blood pressure, vomiting and seizures. Yet the demand for the drugs remains high, especially among teens, who are drawn to the drug because it is legal and does not show up in drug tests.

Like K2, K3 is advertised as incense and is labeled “not for human consumption” to avoid legal scrutiny. Unlike K2, websites that sell K3 indicate that the drug contains Damiana, an herb from South America, and other herbs that make it more potent. Users report that K3 more closely resembles marijuana than K2 in terms of appearance, but it is unclear which ingredients are responsible for the drug’s euphoric effects.

Legal Doesn’t Mean Safe 

Constant changes in the chemical compounds in these drugs forces local governments and law enforcement to remain vigilant in detecting new trends and amending laws to try to keep up. Because the DEA’s ban applies only to specific chemicals, the police have no authority to take action against stores selling K3 other than to test the products for chemicals on the banned list. Many of these stores also continue to sell bath salts, which are similar to meth or cocaine, and other synthetic drugs that have caused panic attacks and even psychosis among users.

Until the DEA takes a broader approach to regulating synthetic drugs, it’s up to parents, teachers and other concerned adults to discuss the drugs’ dangers with teens. When it comes to drugs, legal does not mean safe.

While the connection between alcohol use and criminal activity (including victimization) has been studied and documented among adults, there has been little exploration of the relationship between alcohol use and crime among adolescents. A new study published in the March 2012 edition of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research provides insight into how the two factors interact.

Corresponding author Michael T. French is a professor of health economics from the University of Miami. French and colleagues found that there was a strong connection between alcohol use and both the commission of crimes and victimization, and the pattern was consistent in male and female participants.

French explained that the information provided by the study is helpful because those who commit lesser crimes in adolescence, such as shoplifting, are much more likely than other individuals to become criminals as adults. In the past, says French, research has focused on the connection between illicit drugs and criminal activity, but the new findings provide more information for effective intervention.

The research team used data from four time periods of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, one of the few sources for longitudinal data on alcohol consumption and criminal acts.

In their analysis of the data, the researchers hoped to answer a few key questions, such as whether alcohol consumption can have an effect on whether a person becomes a victim or a perpetrator involved in a crime. They also questioned more specific aspects, like whether alcohol consumption has a more significant effect when it comes to property crimes versus other types of crime. The researchers also wanted to know if the effects were the same for males and females, and whether frequency or severity of alcohol use affected the outcomes.

The researchers found that across both genders, there was a connection between more frequent alcohol use and a greater likelihood of a property crime being committed. In addition, with more frequent alcohol use, an individual was also more likely to both be a perpetrator and a victim of a predatory crime. The researchers reported that though the relationship pattern discovered was not a surprise, the strength of the connection was more significant than predicted.

At the same time, stimulants and inhalants are more likely to be used among this group and once drugs enter the mix, physical and psychological dependence is more likely.

Girls in this age range using drugs are also at more risk sexually than boys. Research findings suggest that adolescent girls consuming alcohol more than five times per month are less likely to use condoms or other birth control during sexual intercourse. The use of marijuana also increases the risk of unprotected sex.

With the data suggesting female adolescents are at a higher risk for substance abuse and unprotected sexual activity, prevention programs aimed specifically at girls should be readily available – yet it is lacking in some areas.

Studies examining prevention programs aimed at both boys and girls report response levels higher among girls as compared with boys. When prevention programs are not gender-specific, they tend to be less effective for girls than boys. One Palinkas et al. study focused on testing social network and skills training and restructuring for female adolescents among multiple ethnic groups.

The study determined the female-specific programs that focus on these skills proved ineffective and are even potentially counterproductive in terms of substance abuse outcomes. Another program launched by Weiss et al. instead focused on empowerment and leadership development, producing outcomes with lower drinking rates among adolescent girls less likely to use substances compared with those in the comparison group.

Elliot et al. focused on a program involving team sports that focused on drug abuse prevention and the promotion of healthy nutrition and exercise. Girls taking part in the program increased their knowledge of the effects of substance abuse and were less likely to use harmful drugs.

In the article, Cardoso highlights his belief that the best interests of children should be the primary consideration of all the policies affecting them. The former president adds that the current approaches have failed at trying to protect children from drug harms and drug use. He calls for several issues to be debated such as how controlling drugs and legal regulations would affect children. Cardoso remains convinced the recommendations of such policies from the Global Commission would have important benefits for young people.

However, Cardoso does urge caution when it comes to business dealings in the future concerning illicit drugs. It has been his experience in dealing with corporations for tobacco and alcohol that their priorities are in maximizing profits and not public health. He emphasizes the need to protect our children stating that we cannot let drugs carry over into the criminal market or to an unregulated market.

Cardoso’s article is a challenge to activists, politicians and researchers and is no doubt controversial. He believes the current policies have caused children harm due to disregard, negligence and carelessness on the part of policy makers. Cardoso added that the policies affecting children, as shown in the Rights of the Child from the UN Convention, should focus on children being at the forefront of the policy discussions on drugs.

Cardoso, along with Professor Gerry Stimson of the International Journal of Drug Policy, believe an open environment should be created to safely discuss these issues in order to best serve the children.

It is important that policymakers be provided with up-to-date information about trends in drug and alcohol use among different segments in the population. This helps communities plan adequate resources for treatment, education and prevention. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism provides periodic reports on the state of drug and alcohol use in the United States.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is a division of the National Institutes of Health. It recently released a report detailing information about trends in hospitalizations for drug and alcohol-related problems. The report found that between 1999 and 2008 there was a significant increase in hospitalizations related to alcohol and drug overdose for those aged 18 to 24 years.

The decade-long study found that the percentage of drug and alcohol overdoses and combinations of drug and alcohol overdoses increased by 25 percent, 56 percent and 76 percent, respectively.

The report showed that in 2008, a third of hospitalizations for overdoses for young adults were due to excessive alcohol consumption. Also in 2008, there were 29,000 hospitalizations for alcohol overdoses recorded for those aged 18 to 24 years. In addition, the report measured that there were 114,000 drug overdoses resulting in hospitalization, with another 29,000 caused by combined overdoses.

There was also a significant increase in hospitalizations for opioid pain medication overdose. The report recorded a 122 percent increase for overdoses of opioid pain medications that resulted in hospitalizations. In one of five of these poisonings, alcohol overdose was also a factor.

The authors of the report noted that the increases were not only observed in this particular age group, but that hospitalizations for drug and alcohol overdoses are growing in other age groups as well. However, the results shown for this age group may indicate a significant problem at an important time of life, when young adults are transitioning into a career and beginning to get married and start families.

The data for this report was collected from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. The data stems from project that collects a 20 percent sample from U.S. hospitals, conducted by researchers from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

According to the CDC researchers, many teenagers are affected by chronic sleep deprivation due to several variable factors, including employment, academics, social, economic, and recreational pressure, as well as biological and family issues. Additionally, sleep deprivation is a common symptom in several mental health conditions, such as major depression and suicidal ideation. In their study, published in the scientific journal Preventive Medicine, lead research Lela McKnight-Eily and colleagues evaluated the prevalence of sleep deprivation among high school students and its correlations to other significant health-risk factors.

Using the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), the researchers analyzed the responses of 12,154 public and private high school students from across the nation regarding their personal health and behaviors. Based on the report’s findings, the researchers discovered that the majority of high school students (nearly 70%) are not receiving the recommended eight hours of sleep per school night. These sleep-deprived students were also more likely than those who reported sufficient sleep to engage in multiple risky behaviors. Students with insufficient sleep reported higher rates of current alcohol use, current cigarette use, current marijuana use, current sexual activity, experiencing serious suicidal thoughts, experiencing sad or hopeless feelings, and getting into one or more physical fights per year. In addition, sleep-deprived students reported higher rates of physical inactivity and unhealthy eating habits.

According to McKnight-Eily and her team, sleep-deprived students have a higher propensity toward risky behaviors due to a decreased ability to comprehend the consequences of negative behaviors as well as an increased receptiveness to peer pressure. Likewise, the combination of sleep deprivation and substance use can significantly hinder motor skills like concentration, alertness, and coordination. This negative combination puts these adolescents at greater risk of further risky behaviors, including heightened recklessness, sexual activity, and injury.

Based on the study’s results and the prevalence of insufficient sleep among teenagers, the researchers assert that more awareness needs to be placed on adolescents’ healthy sleeping habits in order to encourage healthier lifestyles during their crucial developmental years.