Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Most Parents Not Aware Teen Is Using "Study Drugs"

Many parents are not aware that their teenage children abuse "study drugs," a new poll suggests.

In the poll, just 1 percent of parents said their teenage children had taken drugs such as Adderall or Ritalin without a prescription.

That is much lower than the percentage of teens that surveys suggest are using the drugs. For example, a 2012 study of high schoolers found that about 10 percent of sophomores and 12 percent of seniors said they had used the drugs without a prescription.

The new findings, from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, examined parents' awareness of the issue, surveying parents of U.S. children ages 13 to 17. About 11 percent of parents said their teens had been prescribed stimulant medication for ADHD.

Among parents of children who were not prescribed ADHD medications, 1 percent said their teens had used these drugs for study purposes. About 4 percent said they didn't know if their teen had abused these drugs, and 95 percent said their teens had never abused the drugs.

This disconnect between teen drug abuse and parents' awareness of drug abuse may be in part due to the fact that study drugs have more subtle effects than drugs such as heroin and cocaine, allowing teens to more easily hide their drug use, the researchers said.

Source: Live Science
http://www.livescience.com/34506-parents-awareness-teen-study-drugs.html

Survey: Nearly 1 in 4 Teens Drive While Impaired

Nearly a quarter of teens — 23% — admit to driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs used illegally at some point, a new survey finds.

What's worse, they don't view themselves as a danger: Almost 20% of those who drink and drive say it improves their driving, a view shared by 34% of those who drive under the influence of marijuana.

Those are among findings of a new survey of 1,708 11th- and 12th-graders by SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions) and insurer Liberty Mutual.

The survey highlights the vital role of parents in keeping teens safe behind the wheel. It found that teens are more likely to drink around relatively unsupervised events, such as the Fourth of July or during the summer, than during heavily supervised activities like proms or graduations.

About twice as many teens report drinking on summer vacation than teens who admit drinking after prom or graduation, the survey found.

Cathy Chase of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety says the percentage of teens who think they can drive safely after drinking or using marijuana "seems high. But unfortunately, it's not surprising because teens think they're invincible and they thing nothing will happen to them. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a friend or someone in their school getting killed before the reality kind of hits them."

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/25/teens-drunken-driving-impaired-survey/2106325/

Study: Teen Misuse and Abuse of Prescription Drugs Up 33 Percent Since 2008

The 24th Annual Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) by The Partnership at Drugfree.org and MetLife Foundation finds that one in four teens has misused or abused a prescription (Rx) drug at least once in their lifetime – a 33 percent increase over the past five years.  The study also found troubling data on teen misuse or abuse of prescription stimulants. One in eight teens (13 percent) now reports that they have taken the stimulants Ritalin or Adderall when it was not prescribed for them, at least once in their lifetime.

Contributing to this sustained trend in teen medicine abuse are the lax attitudes and beliefs of parents and caregivers. In fact, nearly one-third of parents say they believe Rx stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, normally prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can improve a teen’s academic performance even if the teen does not have ADHD. Parents are not effectively communicating the dangers of Rx medicine misuse and abuse to their kids, nor are they safeguarding their medications at home and disposing of unused medications properly.

Key findings regarding the misuse or abuse of prescription drugs:

• One in four teens (24 percent) reports having misused or abused a prescription drug at least once in their lifetime (up from 18 percent in 2008 to 24 percent in 2012), which translates to about 5 million teens. That is a 33 percent increase over a five-year period.

• Almost one in four teens (23 percent) say their parents don’t care as much if they are caught using Rx drugs without a doctor’s prescription, compared to getting caught with illegal drugs.

• Of those kids who said they abused Rx medications, one in five (20 percent) has done so before age 14.

• More than a quarter of teens (27 percent) mistakenly believe that misusing and abusing prescription drugs is safer than using street drugs.

• One-third of teens (33 percent) say they believe “it’s okay to use prescription drugs that were not prescribed to them to deal with an injury, illness or physical pain.”

“These data make it very clear: the problem is real, the threat immediate and the situation is not poised to get better,” said Steve Pasierb, President and CEO of The Partnership at Drugfree.org. “Parents fear drugs like cocaine or heroin and want to protect their kids. But the truth is that when misused and abused, medicines – especially stimulants and opioids – can be every bit as dangerous and harmful as those illicit street drugs. Medicine abuse is one of the most significant and preventable adolescent health problems facing our families today.

Mixed Results on Teen Abuse of Other Substances:

• Cigarette smoking rates have remained stable, with 22 percent of teens reporting they’ve used cigarettes in the past month.

• Inhalant abuse also remained stable, with 7 percent of teens indicating they’ve abused inhalants over the past year.

• In 2012, almost half of teens (45 percent) have used marijuana in their lifetime, four in 10 (39 percent) have used in the past year and one in four (24 percent) have used within the past month.

• Currently, 57 percent of all teens have used alcohol within the past year (a 10 percent increase from 2008).

• Past-year abuse of over-the-counter (OTC) cough medicine abuse has remained relatively stable at 7 percent (since 2008).

• Methamphetamine use has remained stable, with 4 percent of teens reporting having abused methamphetamine in the past year (since 2008).

• Past-year cocaine use remains at 7 percent (unchanged since 2008).

• Lifetime steroid use is stable at 5 percent (unchanged since 2008).

• Past-year use of Ecstasy is at 8 percent, and has been steadily declining since a surge in prevalence during 2009.

• Past-year use of synthetic drugs is mixed as well, with 12 percent of teens using synthetic marijuana, 4 percent using salvia and 3 percent using bath salts.

Download the full report here.

Source: The Partnership at Drugfree.org
http://www.drugfree.org/newsroom/pats-2012

Most Teen-Drinking Deaths Are Not Traffic Related

When it comes to teens and alcohol, drunken driving is far from the only thing that should concern parents.

That's the message from MADD, whose new analysis of alcohol-related deaths among people 15-20 estimates that 68% of fatalities connected to underage drinking are not traffic related.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving analyzed 2010 data from the FBI, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on deaths related to underage alcohol use. It estimates that 32% of these deaths were traffic fatalities; 30% were homicides, 14% suicides, 9% alcohol poisonings and 15% other causes.

"As parents, we are definitely aware of the dangers of drinking and driving," says MADD national President Jan Withers. "I think we're not as educated about all the dangers that drinking before age 21 can be related to. And they're very, very real."

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/17/underage-drinking-madd-alcohol/2070405/

Pre-College Parental Chat May Reduce Freshman Drinking

 Parents who want to help their teens better navigate the world of college drinking might consider a pre-college chat on the topic. New research suggests it will help douse their desire to imbibe when they hit campus.

"The research shows parents do influence a teen's decisions about drinking, even at this age," said study co-author Michael Cleveland, a research assistant professor at the Prevention Research Center at Pennsylvania State University.

The scientists recruited 1,900 soon-to-be college freshmen to participate in questionnaires about their drinking habits. Their parents were mailed a 22-page handbook that included general information about college student drinking, how to communicate effectively, advice on how to help teens be assertive and resist peer pressure, and detailed information on the physical effects of alcoholic beverages on the body. Parents were asked to read the handbook and then talk with their teen about the contents at one of three randomly assigned times, either during the summer before college, during the fall semester of the first year of college, or during the summer before college and again during the fall semester freshman year.

The findings, reported in a recent issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, show that teens who talked with their parents about anti-drinking strategies before they began their first year of college were more likely to fall into a non-drinking or light-drinking category, or to transition out of a heavy-drinking group if they were already heavy drinkers. Talking with their child in the fall of freshman year was less effective or had no additional impact on drinking behaviors, Cleveland said.

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/03/29/pre-college-parental-chat-may-reduce-freshman-drinking

Middle-School Dating Leads to Higher Dropout, Drug-Use Rates

Students who date in middle school have significantly worse study skills, are four times more likely to drop out of school and report twice as much alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use than their single classmates, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

"Romantic relationships are a hallmark of adolescence, but very few studies have examined how adolescents differ in the development of these relationships," said Pamela Orpinas, study author and professor in the College of Public Health and head of the Department of Health Promotion and Behavior.

Orpinas followed a group of 624 students over a seven-year period from sixth to 12th grade. Each year, the group completed a survey indicating whether they had dated and reported the frequency of different behaviors, including the use of drugs and alcohol. Their teachers completed questionnaires about the students' academic efforts.

"In our study, we found four distinct trajectories," Orpinas said. "Some students never or hardly ever reported dating from middle to high school, and these students had consistently the best study skills according to their teachers. Other students dated infrequently in middle school but increased the frequency of dating in high school. We also saw a large number of students who reported dating since sixth grade."

"At all points in time, teachers rated the students who reported the lowest frequency of dating as having the best study skills and the students with the highest dating as having the worst study skills," according to the study.

The results of the study were published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Source: ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130315151046.htm

Children of Divorce More Likely to Become Smokers

New research from the University of Toronto was not able to prove that children of divorced parents turn to cigarettes as a coping mechanism from lingering childhood trauma. But researchers did find that people whose parents had divorced when they were children were at a significantly increased risk of initiating smoking.

Of the 19,000 U.S adults included in the study, the odds of having smoked 100 or more cigarettes increased by 48 and 39 percent for sons and daughters of separated or divorced parents, respectively. The research suggests that experiencing a parents' divorce, in and of itself, is a risk factor for future smoking.

Source: The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/study-children-of-divorce-more-likely-to-become-smokers/274043/

Just Say No to Talking About Your Own Drug Use with Your Kids

Parents who talk to their kids about their own, past drug use may not be helping their kids to avoid drugs.

“Talk to your kids about drugs,” has been a refrain sung to parents by anti-drug activists and in public service message for decades.  But if these conversations include information about your own past drug use, a new study suggests that it could send potentially harmful mixed messages.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied 561 6th to 8th graders, most of whom were white or Hispanic, about their drug use as well as conversations they had with their parents about drugs.

Reporting in the journal Human Communications Research, the researchers say that youth whose parents discussed the dangers of drugs and their disapproval of drug use had more anti-drug attitudes.  Among the Hispanic students, this was linked with lower levels of reported alcohol use, while among white students it was associated with less reported marijuana use. No effect was found for either group on smoking.

But if parents also discussed their own youthful drinking or drug use, these conversations were linked with a reduction in anti-drug attitudes.  “The more often the parents talked about regret over their own use, the bad things that happened, and that they’d never use it again, the students were more likely to report pro-substance-use beliefs,” lead author Jennifer Kam said to LiveScience.

“Kids might be interpreting it as ‘Mom and Dad used, and they’re still here,’ she told NPR. This confirms prior research that suggested that having former drug addicts tell their stories to teens can glamorize the condition, rather than highlighting the risks and deterring use.

So, what’s a parent to do? Kam does not suggesting lying, but she does caution against volunteering the information unnecessarily.

Source: Time
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/26/just-say-no-to-talking-about-your-own-drug-use-with-your-kids/

Synthetic Marijuana Linked to Kidney Damage

A new report links the use of synthetic cannabinoids, which are sold under the names of "synthetic marijuana," "Spice" and "K2," with kidney damage.

Sixteen cases of acute kidney injury were reported in 2012 in six states after people smoked the synthetic marijuana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report out today. The patients became sick within days and sometimes even hours after smoking. Their symptoms included nausea and vomiting as well as abdominal and flank pain. They were found to be in various stages of kidney failure. The cases were reported in Kansas, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wyoming.

Synthetic cannabinoids are designer drugs dissolved in a solvent, applied to plant material and then smoked. They can mimic the effects of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Even though the products are often sold as incense and labeled "Not for consumption," some people still smoke them as an alternative to marijuana.

Michael Schwartz, a co-author of the report, says, "Synthetic cannabinoids are not safe alternatives to marijuana. There are unexpected and unpredictable health problems that can occur."

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/14/synthetic-marijuana-kidney-damage/1919319/

Study: Underage Drinkers Look to Small Number of Alcohol Brands

Branding plays a much bigger role in the alcoholic beverages teens choose to drink than it does for adults, according to new research.

A study from Johns Hopkins University polled more than 1,000 underage drinkers between 13 and 20 about their alcohol consumption over the previous month, and found they favored a relatively small number of brands.

Leading the pack were Bud Light and Smirnoff Malt Beverages. About 28% of teens reported drinking Bud Light in the past month, and 17% had sipped Smirnoff Ice or one of the brand's other flavored malt drinks.

Budweiser and Smirnoff took the next highest spots as well: Nearly 15% of respondents had tried Budweiser beer, and nearly 13% reached for Smirnoff vodka. Coors Light, Jack Daniel's Bourbons, Corona Extra, Mike's, Captain Morgan Rums and Absolut Vodkas rounded out the rest of the top 10 brands.

It is significant that young drinkers reach for such a concentrated group of brands, study authors said. Eighteen alcohol brands account for 50% of the market share among underage drinkers, but 33 brands dominate half the market for drinkers of all ages.

"For the first time, we know what brands of alcoholic beverages underage youth in the U.S. are drinking," study author David Jernigan, Ph.D., director of the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth at Johns Hopkins, said in a release. "Importantly, this report paves the way for subsequent studies to explore the association between exposure to alcohol advertising and marketing efforts and drinking behavior in young people."

Source: New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/teen-drinkers-reach-bud-light-smirnoff-study-article-1.1261266