Parents Find Talking With Kids About Drugs Complicated by Legalization Measures

By Join Together Staff

Parents are finding it more difficult to have discussions with their children about why they shouldn’t use drugs, as a growing number of states are allowing medical marijuana, or considering legalizing recreational use of the drug, the Associated Press reports.

Colorado and Washington state will vote on legalizing recreational use of marijuana for adults on November 6. Currently, 17 states have legalized medical marijuana. More than a dozen states, and many cities, no longer have criminal penalties for small-scale possession of marijuana, or have made it a low-priority crime for law enforcement.

Parent-child conversations about marijuana “have become extraordinarily complicated,” said Stephen Pasierb, President of The Partnership at Drugfree.org, a national non-profit organization helping parents and families solve the problem of teen substance abuse. Legalization and medical use of marijuana have “created a perception among kids that this is no big deal,” Pasierb said. “You need a calm, rational conversation, not yelling and screaming, and you need the discipline to listen to your child.”

Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes marijuana legalization, said that since today’s parents are more likely than in the past to have tried the drug themselves, they are finding conversations with their children “are becoming a lot more real.” He told the AP, “Parents know a lot more about what they’re talking about, and kids probably suspect that their parents did this when they were younger and didn’t get in trouble with drugs. There’s still hypocrisy, but the level of honesty and frankness in the parent-child dialogue about marijuana is increasing every year.”

A survey released last month by The Partnership at Drugfree.org suggests teen marijuana use has become a normalized behavior. Only 26 percent agree with the statement, “In my school, most teens don’t smoke marijuana,” down from 37 percent in 2008.

Sales of Prescription Painkillers Increasing Across the United States, Analysis Shows

By Join Together Staff

Sales of oxycodone and hydrocodone are sharply rising in areas of the United States where these prescription painkillers were not as popular in the past, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. The rise in sales is driven by an aging population with pain issues, as well as an increase in addiction, experts say.

The AP found a dramatic increase in the distribution of oxycodone between 2000 and 2010 in areas including New York’s Staten Island and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hydrocodone use is rising in Appalachia and in the Midwest, the AP found, after analyzing data from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Painkiller sales are spreading rapidly in areas where there are few resources to treat people who become addicted.

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Support from Middle School Teachers May Reduce Early Use of Alcohol, Study Suggests

By Join Together Staff

Emotional support from middle school teachers may reduce the risk their students will engage in early use of alcohol and other illicit substances, a new study suggests.

The study included 521 middle school students in Seattle. Students who felt more emotional support from teachers reported a delay in starting to use alcohol and other illicit substances, PsychCentral reports. The students defined teacher support as feeling close to a teacher, or being able to talk about their problems with a teacher.

Middle school students who had higher levels of separation anxiety from their parents were also less likely to start using alcohol early, the study found.

“Our results were surprising,” lead researcher Dr. Carolyn McCarty, of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, said in a news release. “We have known that middle school teachers are important in the lives of young people, but this is the first data-driven study which shows that teacher support is associated with lower levels of early alcohol use.”

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Blackouts from College Binge Drinking Lead to Costly Emergency Room Visits

By Join Together Staff 

Blackouts that result from binge drinking among college students cost the average large university about a half million dollars per year, a new study suggests.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin note in Health Affairs that 50 percent of college students who drink report alcohol-induced blackouts. They studied emergency department visits among college students at five universities over two years, and found about one in eight were associated with blackout drinking. Blackout-related injuries ranged from broken bones to head and brain injuries that required CT scans. They estimated that on a large university campus with more than 40,000 students, blackout-associated emergency department visit costs would range from $469,000 to $546,000 per year, MSNBC reports.

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Rat Study Finds Adolescent Brain More Prone to Depression, Addiction

By TRACI PEDERSEN Associate News Editor

From a study of rats, University of Pittsburgh researchers conclude that teens face a greater risk of suffering from depression and addiction than adults.

The researchers compared the brain activity of adolescent and adult rats as they worked on a task in which they anticipated a reward.  Brain cell activity increased in the adolescent rats’ brains in an unusual area: the dorsal striatum (DS) — a region generally associated with habit formation, decision-making, and motivated learning. On the other hand, the adult rats’ DS areas were not triggered by an anticipated reward.

“The brain region traditionally associated with reward and motivation, called the nucleus accumbens, was activated similarly in adults and adolescents,” said study leader Bita Moghaddam, Ph.D., co-author of the paper and a professor of neuroscience in Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

“But the unique sensitivity of adolescent DS to reward anticipation indicates that, in this age group, reward can tap directly into a brain region that is critical for learning and habit formation.”

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High Rates of Childhood Trauma Found in Adult Alcoholics

By Join Together Staff

A new study finds a high rate of childhood trauma in adult alcoholic inpatients. The researchers suggest childhood trauma should be considered when developing prevention and treatment strategies for adults with alcoholism.

While a history of physical, sexual or emotional abuse in childhood is a known risk factor for alcohol dependence, the new study shows how strong the association can be, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, included 196 men and women who were treated as inpatients for alcohol dependence. Overall, 55 percent had a history of childhood trauma. The prevalence of emotional abuse was 21 percent; physical abuse, 31 percent; sexual abuse, 24 percent; emotional neglect, 20 percent; and physical neglect, 20 percent.

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Children Ages 10 to 12 Ambivalent About Smoking and Drinking, Suggests Study

By Join Together Staff

Children ages 10 to 12 feel ambivalent about smoking and drinking, suggests a new study. They have both positive and negative associations with alcohol and cigarettes at this age, according to PsychCentral.

Lead researcher Dr. Roisin O’Connor of Concordia University in Canada says the results indicate the “tween” years are an important time to prevent substance abuse. “We need to be concerned when kids are ambivalent because this is when they may be more easily swayed by social influences,” she said in a news release.

The study included about 400 children, who participated in a computer-based test that required them to place pictures of cigarettes and alcohol with positive or negative words. Dr. O’Connor found that while children initially thought cigarettes and alcohol were bad, they were easily able to start thinking of them as good when they were asked to place them with positive words.

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