Denise Walker, co-director of the University of Washington’s Innovative Programs Research Group, said that marijuana is not a risk-free drug, and that although many people use marijuana without experiencing any problems, other people become addicted and want to stop but don’t know how to.

Walker is the lead author of a report demonstrating that brief, voluntary conversations with an adult led to a significant decrease (up to 20%) in marijuana use for teenagers who frequently used marijuana.

Walker, who is also a UW research assistant professor of social work, said that teens face greater risks from regular marijuana use compared wit adults, because adolescence is a developmental period for learning adult roles, and regular marijuana use can impede this development and academic performance, and also lays the foundation for other risky behaviors.

The researchers examined how a two-session approach called Teen Marijuana Check-Up could help reduce marijuana use in teens. Walker said that most people who need help aren’t getting it because they don’t think they need it, and that they tend to be ambivalent about their drug use.

Despite this, many teens are concerned about their drug use, even if they aren’t sharing their concerns with friends or family members. Walker added that offering teens an opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of marijuana use in a way that isn’t “shaming or blaming” is an effective approach that many teens will participate in voluntarily.

For the study, the researchers visited high-school classrooms and gave short presentations about the myths and facts regarding marijuana, common reasons why teens use the drug, and its behavioral and health consequences. The researchers told the students the study was to give feedback on the students’ marijuana use, not to treat them, and that students could volunteer to participate privately.

About 619 students volunteered and 310 smoked marijuana regularly. The participants, who attended public high schools in Seattle, had one-on-one meetings with health educators two separate times, with each meeting lasting 30-60 minutes over a two-week period. The health educators used one of two approaches: motivational interviewing, in which the student and educator discussed the student’s marijuana use and how it might be affecting the student’s life, or an educational approach in which a PowerPoint presentation described the health and behavioral effects of marijuana use through current marijuana research.

Those in the motivational interviewing group entered the study using marijuana 40 out of the previous 60 days. Three months after counseling began, their use had decreased by 20 percent, using 32 out of 60 days. After a year, they showed a 15 percent decrease, using 34 days out of 60.

Those in the educational group reported only an 8 percent decrease after three months of counseling, going from using 38 days out of the previous 60 days to 35 days out of 60. A year later, they reported using marijuana 34 of 60 days, an 11 percent overall decrease.

The researchers said these findings were encouraging, in that significant reductions in marijuana use resulted from brief meetings and were sustained over a year’s time.

Walker said the researchers hope the low-cost program could be used by drug and alcohol counselors in schools, because the program is designed to attract people who aren’t ready for full treatment such as marijuana rehab but are interested in talking with a professional about their concerns regarding marijuana use.

Source: Science Daily, Two Talks With Teens Leads to Less Marijuana Use for at Least a Year, Study Finds, June 27, 2011

The LA Times posted a piece that highlights changes to the Monitoring the Future survey. This annual survey of drug, alcohol and tobacco use asks 8th, 10th and 12th graders about binge drinking. In recent years, the questions have changed to ask about rates of extreme binge drinking.

According to the University of Michigan’s Lloyd Johnston, who oversees the yearly survey, in the two weeks before completing the survey, 11 percent of high school seniors said they had consumed more than 10 alcoholic drinks in a single sitting. Some 6 percent of seniors said they had consumed more than 15.

In the years since the survey began, binge drinking has come down – especially since its peak in 1983. Johnston noted the same is not true for extreme binge drinking which seems to have not budged for the years it has been followed.

While high school students may find such a pastime appealing, it is also extremely risky. Alcohol poisoning can be one of the potentially fatal outcomes when alcohol saturation levels in the blood reach well beyond the .08 level.

As severe inebriation can compromise the gag reflex, a person who passes out from too much alcohol could choke on their own vomit, or aspirate it into the lungs, causing serious infection. A person who is gurgling or even snoring may be in respiratory crisis. Despite these potential effects, extreme binge drinking is a growing problem.

The report says that the number of emergency room visits by underage drinkers was significantly higher on New Year’s Day in 2009 than on several other holidays and average days during the year.

According to the report, there were 1,980 emergency room visits involving underage drinkers on New Year’s Day in 2009. This was more than twice the daily average over the Fourth of July weekend, which was 942.

Underage drinkers also made more than three times the number of emergency room visits on New Year’s Day in 2009 than the daily average over Memorial Day weekend.

Compared to an average day during the year, the number of emergency visits by underage drinkers was 263 percent higher on New Year’s Day in 2009.

Pamela S. Hyde, JD, SAMHSA administrator, said that the findings should be a wake-up call to parents and other adults, who should pay more attention to young people’s drinking activities, especially during this time of year.

Kenneth R. Warren, PhD, acting director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, said that two to three times more people die in alcohol-related crashes during the period between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and 40 percent of traffic fatalities during this time involve a driver who is impaired by alcohol, compared to 28 percent in the earlier weeks of December.

SAMHSA says that parents should talk with their children early and often about the dangers of drinking alcohol, and that parents, teachers, and other influential adults should talk to children about how alcohol impacts physical and mental health. Parents should also be aware that young people tend to drink more on New Year’s than other times of the year.

Source: WebMD, Bill Hendrick, Underage Drinking Soars on New Year’s Day, December 30, 2010

Researchers are exploring the neural processes of adolescents with family histories of alcohol abuse, and have found that a positive family history is associated with an increased risk of future alcoholism.

Marisa Silveri, co-author of the study, assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and neuroscientist at the Brain Imaging Center within McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, said that the researchers looked at adolescents that hadn’t yet started drinking but had a family history of alcoholism as this would allow them to examine differences in brain activity in teens who drank and teens who didn’t drink.

Silveri said that altered brain functions in teens who have already started drinking could be a result of alcohol use or a pre-existing brain difference that leads to drinking, so this study looked at whether functional brain differences could be observed before the onset of alcohol consumption in adolescents who are at a greater risk of abusing alcohol compared to those who don’t have alcoholism in their family.

For the study, the researchers used the Stroop Interference Test, which requires subjects to prevent themselves from reading the name of a color out loud, instead focusing on a less automatic response of stating the color of the ink the word is written in. For example, saying “blue” when the word “red” is written in blue ink.

The study included 32 adolescents who volunteered for the experiment, and 18 of them had a family history of alcoholism. Using an MRI scanner, they collected data to indicate activation levels within the brain during the Stroop test.

They found that those with family history of alcoholism had higher levels of frontal lobe activation during the Stroop test, suggesting that this group had decreased neuronal efficiency.

Susan F. Tapert, a professor at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System and University of California San Diego Department of Psychiatry, said that the study suggests that people with family histories of alcoholism have a less developed frontal system, which may make them less equipped to manage real-life situations such as choosing not to drink alcohol.

Silveri said it’s important to educate adolescents on why family histories of alcoholism could put them at a greater risk of developing alcohol problems in the future.

Source: Science Daily, Adolescents at Risk for Alcohol Abuse Show Decreased Brain Activation, December 6, 2010

Previous research has found that marijuana users have trouble changing behavioral responses in the context of certain situations, which is known as cognitive flexibility. The current study, led by Staci Gruber, PhD, at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, looked at participants’ performance on a test of cognitive flexibility called the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task.

Participants were shown four cards that differ in color, symbol, and value. Based on the rules they pick up on from displayed cards, they had to sort a deck of cards. They weren’t told what the rules are; instead they were told whether their sorting was correct or incorrect. The rules were changed without warning during the test, and the participants had to respond accordingly. The way in which they responded is a strong indicator of cognitive flexibility.

The study also found that regular marijuana users made repeated errors, even after being told they were answering incorrectly. Heavy users also had more trouble maintaining a set of rules, which suggests that they had trouble focusing on the task. Those who started using marijuana before age 16 and those who used the most marijuana were the most impaired.

Gruber said that the study adds to the growing evidence that marijuana directly affects cognitive function, and that both the age at which a person starts using marijuana and the amount of marijuana used can significantly affect cognition. With the prevalence of marijuana, the study highlights the importance of curbing marijuana use, especially among adolescents.

Source: Science Daily, Human Study Shows Greater Cognitive Deficits in Marijuana Users Who Start Young, November 17, 2010

Jennifer R. Havens, Ph.D., M.P.H., of University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, and colleagues looked at data collected from 17,872 individuals between the ages of 12 to 17 who participated in the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and found that 52 percent lived in urban areas, 51 percent were male, and 59 percent were white.

Illicit drug use was the same among urban and rural youth (including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens), but 13 percent of rural youth reported abusing prescription drugs compared with 10 percent of urban youth. The researchers also found that rural teens were more likely to have abused pain relievers or tranquilizers (11.5 percent versus 10.3 percent and 3.5 percent versus 2.5 percent, respectively).

The researchers took into account sociodemographic factors, health status, and the use of other substances, but still found that rural teens were 26 percent more likely than other adolescents to report abusing prescription drugs. One reason for this may be that drugs like heroin aren’t as readily available in rural areas as are prescription drugs.

Rural teens with poorer health, depression, or other substance abuse were more likely to abuse prescription drugs. Teens who lived in a household with two parents were 32 percent less likely to abuse prescription drugs, which suggests that family involvement may be integral to reducing prescription drug abuse. Teens who were enrolled in school were also less likely to abuse the drugs.

The authors noted that the cultural, structural, and social aspects of rural living can affect the prevalence of drug use and exacerbate its consequences. Being more isolated in a rural environment can also impact treatment, such as mental health and substance abuse services, as resources may be in short supply. They concluded that more research should be done to look at the casual mechanisms surrounding prescription drug abuse among adolescents in rural settings to help develop effective interventions for this population.

Source: Science Daily, Non-Medical Prescription Drug Use More Common Among Rural Teens Than City Dwellers, November 1, 2010

Delaney-Black said that parents and doctors shouldn’t rely on what teens report about their drug use. Some people don’t trust the confidentiality agreement, and others may fear getting in trouble. Many people feel this information is personal and doesn’t need to be shared.

For the study, the researchers asked questions of more than 200 teens and 200 caregivers (80 percent of which were mothers) about their drug use and then analyzed their hair samples, testing for drugs. Although no teens said they had recently used opiates such as heroin or prescription painkillers, nearly 7 percent tested positive for opiates. Three percent of parents admitted using opiates, but 7 percent tested positive. One percent of teens said they had recently used cocaine, but about one-third of the respondents tested positive. Only six prevent of parents admitted recent cocaine use, but 28 percent tested positive.

Delaney-Black said that hair tests can sometimes come out positive when a person wasn’t actually using drugs but was around people who were, but the study findings show that what teens and parents say about their drug use is actually quite misleading.

The study also found that parents tended to under-report their kids’ drug use, which suggests that clinicians should rely on other methods (like drug testing) rather than self-reports or even parents’ reports to identify teens who are abusing drugs or alcohol.

Delaney-Black said that previous similar studies seem to have only looked at teens who were receiving treatment for substance abuse or in the court system.

Ty S. Schepis, an assistant professor of psychology at Texas State University at San Marcos, said the study underscores the idea that most people aren’t honest about their substance abuse, and that they are reluctant to be honest about participating in illegal or “undesirable” activities.

Source: MSN, Randy Dotinga, Teens, Parents Often Lie About Illicit Drug Use, October 26, 2010

Because of these negative consequences, it’s important to identify predictors of substance use disorders.
Researchers have previously identified attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as being associated with the development of substance use disorders, and Brook and his colleagues wanted to see if there was a similar link between conduct disorders and later substance use disorders.

The researchers looked at 485 people who were initially recruited from upstate New York in 1975 and followed up with them to a mean age of 37 years. Participants were assessed at 14 years and 16 years, and then again between the ages of 27 and 37. They evaluated the existence of ADHD and conduct disorders using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children, and substance use disorders were identified with the University of Michigan’s Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

Those with ADHD in adolescence were 1.9 times more likely to develop a substance use disorder, and those with conduct disorder in adolescence were 3.5 times more likely to develop a substance use disorder. The authors write that clinicians should pay attention to ADHD in adolescents when it progresses to conduct disorder, as conduct disorder is a big indicator of later substance use disorders.

The researchers conclude that because ADHD usually develops earlier than conduct disorders, ADHD may be an important cue for eventual conduct disorder and perhaps later substance use disorders. They add that further research about this developmental pattern is needed.

Source: Medscape Today, Laurie Barclay, MD, Conduct Disorder in Adolescence Predicts Substance Use Disorders in Adulthood, October 11, 2010

By surveying thousands of teenagers ages 12–17 in telephone interviews or Internet questionnaires, CASA researchers assessed the impact of ritual family discussion during dinnertime on teenagers’ likelihood to take adverse social and health risks like substance abuse.

Based on the teenagers’ responses, the researchers found that 60% of teenagers have regular dinners with their family at least five times a week—a statistic that has remained fairly steady for the last ten years. Compared to those teenagers who have frequent family dinners, teenagers who reported having infrequent family dinners (less than three family meals per week) were 1.5 times more likely to have used marijuana, nearly 2 times likelier to have used alcohol, and 2 times likelier to have used tobacco. These teenagers who have less opportunity to discuss personal issues with their parents during dinnertime were also found to be twice as likely to illicitly obtain marijuana or prescription drugs within an hour or less than their counterparts who had frequent family dinners.

Teenagers who have frequent family dinners, on the other hand, were more likely to report not having access to marijuana and prescription drugs. Despite their disparities regarding substance abuse, the majority of teenagers (72%) agreed that having regular family dinners is very or fairly important, indicating that most would still appreciate the opportunity even if they do not regularly experience it.

In addition, teenagers who reported having frequent family dinners were less likely to have friends who abuse substances. For those who have fewer family dinners per week, teenagers were 1.25 times likelier to have friends who abuse illicit substances such as acid, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, and methamphetamine; 1.5 times likelier to have friends who abuse prescription drugs; and more than 1.5 times likelier to have friends who regularly consume alcohol or marijuana.

From their overall investigation, the CASA researchers found that teenagers who reported having closer family ties were less likely to misuse substances or associate with others who are users. In the midst of rising substance abuse among the U.S. population—especially among younger age groups of 12–17 years and 18–25 years—the effects generated by communicating with adolescents about the dangers of substance abuse and its consequences has shown to create lasting impacts on their current decision-making and potential future choices as well.

Furthermore, family dinnertime offers teenagers the opportunity to open up about their involvement in school, friends, relationships, and other recreational actions. The more frequent the dinnertime routine, the more accustomed teenagers may feel to having confidence and trust in their parents when it comes to personal issues. The new report signifies that positive effects on adolescents’ lives really are generated by family table talk, a time which may be considered as particularly important to teens within their fast-paced, ever-evolving technological world.

CASA recommends that parents take the time to make time for family talk, as in the window of opportunity that dinnertime provides for open discussion. The communication that can be exchanged among parents and their children during this time helps bolster parents’ efforts to shape healthy, drug-free children. Also, CASA is endorsing this year’s national “Family Day,” a traditional celebration started in 2001 to encourage parents to embrace spending quality time with their children in an effort to prevent adolescent substance abuse. Family Day will take place on September 27 this year and is expected to be supported by the White House and all State governments.

Source: The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 2010 Family Dinners Report Finds: Teens Who Have Infrequent Family Dinners Likelier to Expect to Use Drugs in the Future, September 22, 2010

The survey, conducted by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University with funding provided by the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration’s Division of Mental Health and Addiction, questioned 169,059 students from 523 public and private schools.

Ruth Gassman, director of the Indiana Prevention Resource Center, said that the number of adolescents using marijuana has been increasing since 2008, which could suggest a lack of concern about the use of the drug. She added that marijuana can impair learning and concentration, reduce short-term memory, and increase heart rate.

This year, 1.5 percent of sixth graders reported using marijuana, which is up from 1.3 percent in 2008. Among ninth graders, the numbers went from 10.4 percent to 12.7 percent. For twelfth graders, the numbers increased from 16.2 percent to 19.2 percent.

The survey also found that smoking decreased by sixth through twelfth graders since 2009. Among twelfth graders, the numbers decreased by 3.2 percent. Gassman said this shows that smoking prevention efforts Indiana have been working.

However, there was an upward trend in the use of tobacco pipes. Monthly use increased from 2.5 percent in 2006 to 5.2 percent in 2010, and lifetime use increased from 6.0 percent in 2006 to 11.1 percent in 2010.

The survey also found that perception of easy access to alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana was associated with an increase in use. Gassman said that family members and adults can play an important role in preventing adolescents from accessing these substances. The most important way to prevent kids from using these drugs is for adults to not use them, and to make sure that alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and other drugs aren’t kept in the house.

Source: Indiana University, Youth drug use in Indiana: Annual survey finds increasing use of marijuana, tobacco in pipes, September 8, 2010