A new study has revealed that teenagers who sleep less than seven hours a night are more likely to abuse marijuana.

• Researchers from Harvard University and University of California in San Diego studied the sleep patterns and drug use of 8,000 teenagers.
  
• Teens who have friends who sleep less than seven hours a night are also more likely to sleep fewer than seven hours.
  
• Teens with friends who use marijuana were more than twice as likely to use it themselves.
  
• Teens with friends who both sleep less than seven hours and use marijuana are 20 times more likely to use marijuana themselves.

The researchers believe that increasing the number of hours teens sleep each night might help reduce the prevalence of teen abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

This study was presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Labels: marijuana, sleep

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The New Mexico legislature has resurrected a previously-failed measure aimed at offering something other than jail time to people facing drug possession charges.

Susan Montoya Bryan of the Associated Press provided the following details in her Feb. 17 article:

The proposed Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act would give judges the ability to determine after a hearing if a treatment program would be a viable option for an interested defendant. The defendant would have to pay for the treatment, and the state could pursue the charges if the treatment wasn't completed.

Supporters of the measure, which passed on a 34-31 vote, said the option of treatment could help break the cycle of drug addiction and save the state millions of dollars in incarceration costs.

"We here in New Mexico have found that incarceration isn't the only answer, but it's certainly the most expensive one," said House Majority Leader W. Ken Martinez, D-Grants. "If we just incarcerate people at that rate, at that huge expense, we end up having to figure out a way to pay for it."

Labels: jail, treatment

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Teenagers tend to abuse marijuana more often if they live in a state where it is legal for medical use. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), ten of the 15 states with the highest percentage of teenagers who admit to smoking marijuana within the last 30 days are states where marijuana is legal.

• Marijuana is the most widely abused illicit drug.
• A national survey by the Department of Health and Human Resources found that 60 percent of the seven million Americans who use illegal drugs abuse marijuana.
• The use of marijuana keeps increasing among teenagers, even as their cigarette use decreases, according to a 2009 NIDA study.

Many experts believe that more teenagers are abusing prescription drugs because they think these drugs are safer than street drugs. If marijuana is legalized as a prescription drug, teenagers may believe it is safe to use, too.

Some studies have shown that the human brain does not completely develop until after age 21, and that the abuse of alcohol and other drugs in adolescence may cause permanent brain damage.

Labels: marijuana, medical marijuana, legal drugs

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When a loved one enters a recovery program for an alcohol or drug addiction, you want to be supportive. Though it will be difficult, you also need to keep your own expectations in check.

Writer Carole Bennett addressed the necessity of managing one's expectations in a Feb. 3 article on the Huffington Post:

You need to be bold enough and strong enough to let the alcoholic/addict's recovery unfold as it is meant to, not as you want it to. This is an important start in reining in your expectations, and in doing so you will be ahead of the curve.

Your expectations should not be part of the alcoholic/addicts life as they have nothing to do with you and whether you are doing the "right thing or not." Even if you believe you have found the best rehabilitation program in the world, remember that it is not your program and your expectations should not be pinned on the alcoholic/addicts performance or success. ...

If your expectations are not met, it may be difficult to cover up your disappointment. It's possible that the alcoholic/addict will sense this and realize that they are the reason for this sorrow. If they start to lose faith in themselves as well, this may create added pressure and possibly fuel a downward spiral.

Labels: support, recovery

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A study from the University of Valencia found that exposure to drugs like ecstasy or cocaine during adolescence may make people more vulnerable to developing addictions.

The study found that exposure to these drugs during adolescence produces changes that last into adulthood, increasing "reinforcing effects" of the drug.

Dr. Jose Minarro and his colleagues gave drugs to mice over an eight-day period, and found they developed an increased vulnerability to them, more so than adult mice exposed to drugs.

"Adolescence is a critical stage in development, during which time drug consumption affects plastic cerebral processes in ways that cause changes that persist right through adulthood," Dr. Minarro wrote in his report, which appeared in the journal Addiction Biology.

Labels: addiction, adolescence

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Most parents know that marijuana is the most commonly abused illegal drug among teenagers, But these same parents may be unaware that the second most popular category of abused drugs -- inhalants -- contains substances that are commonly found in many households:

• Common inhalants are rubber cement, paint thinner, nail polish remover, gasoline, correction fluid, and bleach.
• Teenagers use these substances to get a quick high by sniffing them from open containers or "huffing" from a rag held to the face after soaking it in the substance.
• Many people believe that inhalants are not harmful, but the truth is they can cause health problems and even death.
• Long-term health problems are damage to the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and brain.

Signs of inhalant abuse are a chemical smell on clothing, mouth sores, runny eyes and nose, and appearing drunk or dazed.

Labels: marijuana, inhalants

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A report released last month has found an usually high number of Ecstasy-related deaths among young people. The report, generated by Professor Fabrizio Schifano at the University of Hertfordshire, appeared in the online version of Neuropsychobiology.

"Professor Schifano and his colleagues at St Georges, University of Londons International Centre for Drug Policy, which runs the National Programme [sic] on Substance Abuse Deaths (np-SAD), reviewed stimulant-related deaths from the np-SAD database and from the British Crime Survey2001-2007," the medical news site ScienceDaily reported.

Study of the database and crime survey found that there was almost as many Ecstasy-related deaths as there were amphetamine and methylamphetamine-related deaths combined. Of equal concern was the fact that most of the Ecstasy deaths were young, healthy people.

Labels: ecstasy, death

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According to a Feb. 4 article by Michael Felberbaum of the Miami Herald, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is concerned that a new type of smokeless tobacco products may be attractive to teenagers and young adults, and could lead to increases in tobacco use and addiction among young people:

The FDA's Center for Tobacco Products wrote to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of Camel cigarettes, and the smaller Star Scientific Inc. on Monday voicing concern over smokeless products that are consumed like breath mints but made from finely milled tobacco.

"CTP is concerned that children and adolescents may find dissolvable tobacco products particularly appealing, given the brightly colored packaging, candy-like appearance and easily concealable size of many of these products," Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the Center for Tobacco Products, told the companies.

Deyton said regulators are worried the products' nicotine content and rapid dissolution could cause nicotine dependence and addiction and be especially dangerous to children and young adults.

Labels: tobacco use

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Police in New Rochelle, N.Y., recently completed a training exercise to equip them to take a more effective role in the fight against underage drinking.

Shawn Cohen of lohud.com reported on the training in a Jan. 26 article:

About 85 police officers from 24 jurisdictions participated in the half-day training exercises on how to prevent underage drinking and safely disperse underage gatherings involving alcohol.

The event was sponsored by the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services in partnership with several groups including New Rochelle FOCUS (Families Organized to Curb the Use of Substances). ...

"House parties are chaotic and, when police departments respond to them, they're placed in chaotic situations," [said Bruce Kelly, coalition coordinator for FOCUS and a former investigator and prosecutor in the Westchester District Attorney's Office]. This training gives them effective ways to deal with the chaos and also make sure kids and parties are dispersed safely."

Labels: laws, underage drinking, parties

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Ray Bauer was the principal of Milford High School in Ohio. He cared so deeply about students that he even worried when they sat alone during lunch. Bauer passed away suddenly last August, but not before starting the Coalition for a Drug Free Milford-Miami Township.

"Since Bauer's sudden death in August the coalition, which is composed of local officials, students and school administrators, has continued to meet and recently launched a campaign designed to show teens and pre-teens that underage drinking isnt as prevalent as they might believe," area newspaper The Community Press reported

Studies have found that 77 percent of teenagers don't drink -- and these students are the coalition's focus, the paper reported. The group has passed out flyers, is making t-shirts and wristbands to promote its message, and is developing sixth-grade-level curriculum about alcohol abuse and prevention.

Labels: prevention, community_programs, ohio, middle_school

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A study of laboratory animals found that cocaine changes the way genes in their brains work.

Dr. Ian Maze, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and author of the study, explained that genes are not just about heredity. They also regulate how cells in the body behave.

"When you give an animal a single dose of cocaine, you start to have genes aberrantly turn off and on in the strange pattern that we are still trying to figure out," he said.

Dr. Maze's study indicates that cocaine changes the region of the brain essential for experiencing pleasure and desire. This may partly explain why people get addicted to cocaine.

"This study is a major step in understanding the development of cocaine addiction and a first step toward generating ideas for how we might use epigenetic regulation to modulate the development of addiction," said Peter Kalivas, professor of neuroscience at the Medical University of South Carolina.

The study appeared in the journal Science.

Labels: cocaine, brain_damage

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Keeping the legal drinking age at twenty-one years old may be a good idea, according to a new set of recommendations from Canada.

• Hubert Sacy, director general of the research team Educ'alcool, said that adolescents should not have access to alcohol because their brains are still developing.
  
• Adolescents and teens who drink alcohol are more likely to abuse the drug and put themselves in risky situations.
  
• Alcohol can adversely affect the development of a teenagers organs, muscles and reproductive system, and can also negatively affect hormonal levels.
  
• In the new report, Stacy noted that people who start drinking in middle school are more likely to have problems with delinquency, emotional control and alcohol dependence by the time they are in their mid-twenties.

Labels: alcohol, legal drinking age, canada

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