Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Teen Marijuana Use on Rise

I can't envision a time when we won't have to be concerned about drug and alcohol use among teens. The usage statistics will rise and fall, but parents should continue to be intentional about talking to their kids about the dangers of drug and alcohol use and abuse. The current rise in marijuana usage rates provides an open door for parents to do so.

The Partnership at Drugfree.org (previously known as the Partnership for a Drug-Free America) has released its 23rd annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) which finds that past-month marijuana use - particularly heavy use - has increased significantly among U.S. high school students since 2008. 9 percent of teens (nearly 1.5 million) smlked marijuana heavily (at least 20 times) in the past month. Overall, past month heavy marijuana use is up 80 percent among U.S. teens since 2008.

Key findings on teen marijuana use:

• Past-month use is up 42 percent (from 19 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2011, which translates to about 4 milllion teens).
• Past-year use is up 26 percent (up from 31 percent in 2008 to 39 percent in 2011, which translates to about 6 million teens).
• Lifetime use is up 21 percent (up from 39 percent in 2008 to 47 percent in 2011, which translates to nearly 8 million teens).
• 71 percent of teens say they have friends who use marijuana regularly (up from 64 percent in 2008).
• Teen past-month "heavy" marijuana uses are significantly more likely to use other drugs:
   - 30 times more likely to use cocaine/crack
   - 20 times more likely to use Ecstasy
   - 15 times more likely to use prescription pain relievers
   - 14 times more likely to abuse over-the-counter medicines.

Other key findings:
• Prescription medicine abuse remains high, but unchanged (17 percent for prescription drugs, 12 percent for over-the-counter cough and cold medicines).
• Past-month smoking rates have declined 19 percent (from 27 percent in 2010 to 22 percent in 2011).
• Past-year alcohol use is holding steady at 46 percent and past-month use at 38 percent.

Source: Partnership at Drugfree.org
http://www.drugfree.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PATS-Key-Findings-May-2-2012.pdf

Some Teens May be Wired for Addiction

In the largest imaging study of the adolescent brain ever conducted — involving 1,896 14-year-olds — scientists report in Nature Neuroscience that some teenagers may be more inclined to experiment with drugs and alcohol, simply because their brains work differently, making them more impulsive.

Moreover, different brain networks appear to be involved in the self-control problems of substance abuse among teenagers than those associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, even though both problems stem, in part, from a failure to inhibit behavior, the scientists report.

Neuroimaging expert Dr. Robert Whelan at the University of Vermont, was the study’s lead author. Whelan and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging, which tracks the changes in blood flow between neurons associated with mental activity. They monitored brain responses as the teenagers moved one hand in response to a stream of commands, a widely used research protocol called the “stop-signal task” that is much like a game of Simon Says.  Periodically — and unpredictably — the volunteers would be ordered to stop moving their hands. The researchers identified seven neural networks active when the teenagers could stop themselves and six other brain circuits active when they could not.

Among adolescents with a history of alcohol, cigarettes, and illegal drug use, however, they found that the impulse control problem was associated with diminished activity in a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex. The researchers found an entirely separate set of impulse-control networks connected with the symptoms of ADHD, which were distinct from those associated with adolescent substance abuse.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2012/04/30/are-some-teenagers-wired-for-addiction/?mod=google_news_blog

Young Americans Have Highest Death Rate Among High Income Countries

A new study of adolescent health around the globe found the United States had the highest mortality rate for people ages 10-to-24 of any high-income country in the world.

The American kids were also No. 1 in pot-smoking, moving toward the top spot in boozing — all while still hitting the gym harder than their contemporaries in other wealthy nations.

Death on the wrong end of a gun or any other violent method is up to 20 times more likely in the U.S. than the other 27 wealthy nations, according to findings reported in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Traffic accidents combined with the violent deaths boosted the U.S. to its undesired position atop the mortality charts, The Lancet wrote in a series of articles this week.

“The drinking patterns of USA adolescents are catching up with those in other (high-income countries),” The Lancet reported. One reason the American numbers are disturbing: Most of the domestic binge drinkers are too young to drink legally. While the U.S. drinking age is 21, the number is as low as 16 in other nations.

The numbers also indicated that U.S. kids ages 13-15 exercised more than their global counterparts in high-income countries. The boys were No. 1 and the girls No. 2 in the rankings.

Source: NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/hard-partying-young-americans-highest-death-rate-high-income-country-study-article-1.1067644

Alcohol Poisoning Linked to Teens Drinking Hand Sanitizer

It's far too early to call this more than a localized occurence, but it's worthwhile for parents to become aware of the potential for kids abusing alcohol through drinking hand sanitizer.

Six teenagers have shown up in two San Fernando Valley emergency rooms in the last few months with alcohol poisoning after drinking hand sanitizer, worrying public health officials who say the cases could signal a dangerous trend.

Some of the teenagers used salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, making a potent drink that is similar to a shot of hard liquor.

"All it takes is just a few swallows and you have a drunk teenager," said Cyrus Rangan, director of the toxicology bureau for the county public health department and a medical toxicology consultant for Children's Hospital Los Angeles. "There is no question that it is dangerous."

Although there have been only a handful of cases, Rangan said the practice could easily become a larger problem. Bottles of hand sanitizer are inexpensive and accessible, and teenagers can find distillation instructions on the Internet.

"It is kind of scary that they go to that extent to get a shot of essentially hard liquor," Rangan said.

The liquid hand sanitizer is 62% ethyl alcohol and makes a 120-proof liquid. A few drinks can cause a person's speech to slur and stomach to burn, and make people so drunk that they have to be monitored in the emergency room.

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hand-sanitizer-20120424,0,4801404.story

Survey Reveals Shocking Levels of Teen Drinking, Drug Abuse

A new study shows that by the time most teens reach late adolescence, most of them have drank alcohol and abused illicit substances.

The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, revealed that 78 percent of U.S. teens had drank alcohol, and 47 percent of the group said they'd consumed 12 or more drinks in the past year. When it came to drug use, 81 percent of teens said they had the opportunity to use illicit substances, with 42.5 percent actually tried them.

A disturbing finding was that 15 percent of the teens met the criteria for lifetime alcohol abuse, and 16 percent could be categorized as drug abusers. The median age for alcohol abuse to begin was 14 with or without dependent behavior. The median age for drug abuse with dependence to start was at the age of 14 and teens who started abusing illicit substances at 15 were less likely to be dependent.

While there were no main gender differences in drug and alcohol abuse for teens age 13 to 16, between the ages of 17 to 18, males had much higher rates for alcohol and drug abuse.

Source: CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57408679-10391704/survey-reveals-shocking-levels-of-teen-drinking-drug-abuse/

Synthetic Marijuana Can Cause Side Effects

Teens who use synthetic marijuana, also called K2 or spice, could end up in the emergency room experiencing some serious side effects, according to a new case report.

Researchers looked at three cases of teens admitted to the emergency room who they suspect were using synthetic marijuana. In each case, they found that teens showed signs of unexpected behaviors, ranging from agitation and increased sweating to an inability to speak and hallucinations.

"These drugs are unregulated," said study co-author Dr. Joanna Cohen, a pediatric emergency physician at the Children's National Medical Center. "Symptoms can be unpredictable because the drug is mixed with other types of chemicals and substances."

Because synthetic marijuana products vary enormously in terms of the ingredients they contain, recognizing the signs of use may be especially difficult.

Synthetic marijuana contains a blend of plants and herbs which are then sprayed with an active ingredient, JWH-018, a synthetic cannabinoid. The ingredient is similar to cannabis in that it gives a marijuana-like high.

The drug is legal, and kids can easily access it at convenience stores, gas stations and on the Internet. It has grown increasingly popular over the past several years.

In 2011, poison control centers reported handling nearly 7,000 calls about K2, nearly double the calls they received in 2010.

There is a growing body of evidence reporting the complications of synthetic marijuana, but it's still not known how many people are using it and not having complications.

The report is published in the journal Pediatrics.

Source: My Health News Daily
http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/2367-synthetic-marijuana-unusual-side-effects.html

Teen Tobacco Epidemic Shocks Surgeon General

Many of America's teens smoke cigarettes as well as use smokeless tobacco, and the tobacco industry's marketing fuels their addiction, says the first U.S. surgeon general's report on youth tobacco use since 1994.

"The numbers are really shocking," Surgeon General Regina Benjamin said in an interview, citing data in a new report that finds nearly one in four high school seniors and one in three young adults under age 26 smoke despite a half-century of federal warnings about tobacco.

"It's a problem we have to solve," Benjamin said, calling it a "pediatric epidemic" in need of greater public action. She said one of every three young smokers will quit and one of the others will die from tobacco-related causes. She said adolescents, because their bodies are developing, are more susceptible than adults to nicotine's addictiveness and tobacco's damage to hearts and lungs.

The voluminous report finds that progress in reducing youth cigarette smoking — quite dramatic from 1997 to 2003 — has slowed in recent years. It says more high school students are using smokeless tobacco and many (at least half of white and Hispanic male tobacco users and nearly half of Hispanic female users) both smoke and chew tobacco.

The report concludes that the tobacco industry's $10 billion in annual marketing, some of it in promotions to reduce prices, encourages young people to begin and continue their tobacco use.

Source: USA Today
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2012-03-08/Teen-tobacco-epidemic-shocks-surgeon-general/53404520/1

Smoking, Drinking Teens Are Unhappiest of All

Teenagers who smoke, drink alcohol and eat junk food are significantly more likely to be unhappy than their clean- living counterparts, a study has found.

In the study, about 5,000 children were questioned on their appearance, family, friends, school and life as a whole, and had their happiness levels rated.

Researchers discovered that those who never drank alcohol were between four and six times more likely to have higher levels of happiness than those who did, while those who shunned cigarettes were about five times more likely to have high happiness scores than young smokers.

The authors of the study, based at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University, used data from Understanding Society, a long-term study of 40,000 UK households, to analyse the home life and health-related behaviour of about 5,000 ten to 15-year-olds.

Their results found that unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking alcohol and not taking exercise were closely linked to substantially lower happiness scores, even when factors such as family income and parents’ education were taken into account.

Source: Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2109572/Smoking-drinking-teens-unhappiest---fruit-veg-secret-good-life.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Viewing Alcohol Use in Movies Linked to Teen Binge Drinking

Adolescent exposure to movies that depict alcohol consumption is significantly associated with binge drinking, according to a multi-national study published online Pediatrics.

Reiner Hanewinkel, Ph.D., of University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, Germany, and colleagues studied survey results from 16,551 students (mean age of 13.4 ± 1.18 years) from six European countries (Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Scotland). Exposure to alcohol use depicted in movies was estimated from the 250 top-grossing movies of each country from 2004 to 2009.

The researchers found that 27 percent of the participants had consumed more than five drinks on at least one occasion. The crude relationship between movie alcohol use exposure and lifetime binge drinking was significant in all countries. After adjusting for variables, the relationship was still significant in all but one country. The association was content specific; there was no significant relationship between lifetime binge drinking and exposure to smoking in movies.

"The link between alcohol use in movies and adolescent binge drinking was robust and seems relatively unaffected by cultural contexts," the authors write.

Source: DoctorsLounge
http://www.doctorslounge.com/index.php/news/pb/27244

Teen Drivers and Marijuana: A Dangerous Trend

A growing percentage of teens do not see marijuana use as a distraction while driving, and nearly one in five (19%) say they have gotten behind the wheel after smoking pot, a new study reports.

In the study of nearly 2,300 11th- and 12th-graders across the country, commissioned by Liberty Mutual Insurance and SADD, 70% of teens say marijuana use is "very" or "extremely" distracting to their driving, down from 78% in 2009.

The findings reflect "a dangerous trend toward the acceptance of marijuana and other substances compared to our study of teens conducted just two years ago," says Stephen Wallace, senior adviser for policy, research and education at SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions).

The trend has been reflected elsewhere. In December, the University of Michigan's "Monitoring the Future" study of 47,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders found that marijuana use rose in 2011 for the fourth straight year and that daily use was at a 30-year peak level among high school seniors.

The new study's findings are disturbing "both in terms of the increased use of marijuana and from the perspective that many think this is not a danger," Wallace says.

Among teens who have driven after using marijuana, 36% say it presents no distraction when operating a vehicle. Nearly one in five (19%) say alcohol is no distraction.

In talking with teenagers around the country, "we hear from young people who believe that marijuana actually makes them a safer driver, that they concentrate harder, drive slower," Wallace says. Those are all misconceptions, he says, adding that "marijuana affects memory, judgment, and perception" and can lead to poor decisions when behind the wheel.

Source: USA Today
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/parenting-family/teen-ya/story/2012-02-22/Marijuana-is-no-big-deal-to-teen-drivers/53211980/1