College boys are just as likely to experience violence on campus as are college girls, according to a report in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"We've known that drinking increases the risk of perpetuating violence," said the study's leader, Professor Elizabeth Saewyc of the University of British Columbia. "In this study we found alcohol consumption puts both young men and women at higher risk of being victimized."

• The study found that 17 percent of college men and 16 percent of college women reported emotional or physical violence in the past six months.
• Half the emotional and 20 percent of the physical violence came from romantic partner.
• Sixty percent of the men reported violence associated with drinking, compared to only 30 percent of the females in the study.

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Labels: alcohol_abuse, college_students, violence

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Experts on adolescent drinking are looking for reasons why binge drinking among college students is so much more common than is excessive drinking among people the same age who aren't enrolled in college.

Binge drinking is defined as consuming five or more drinks in a row on one occasion.

Since the drinking age was raised to 21 years old by all states in the 1980s, binge drinking has declined in the group ages 18 to 24 years old, except among college students, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

• In the last 27 years, binge drinking among men ages 18 to 20 years old not enrolled in college dropped by 30 percent.
• However, binge drinking remained statistically the same among college men the same age, and increased slightly among college women, according to this study from Washington University School of Medicine.
• The survey found that 83 percent of college students drink and 41 percent admit to binge drinking over the last two weeks.

Some people believe that life on campus encourages heavy drinking, because of peer pressure, a lack of parental supervision, and having older friends who can buy alcohol for underage students.

Last year more than 100 college presidents called for lowering the legal drinking age to 18 years old, under the theory that students would be less likely to engage in secret binge drinking if it became legal. Groups such as Mothers against Drunk Driving, insurance companies, and police organizations do not want the legal drinking age lowered.

Labels: binge drinking, college_students

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A study from Penn State University indicates that parents who allow their teenagers to drink at home may be increasing their children's risk of dangerous drinking later in life.

Dr. Caitlin Abar, of PSU's Prevention Research and Methodology Center, studied 300 college freshmen. Half the group had parents who never allowed them to drink, and they were the ones less likely to drink heavily in college.

"The greater the number of drinks that a parent had set as the limit for their teens, the more often they drank and got drunk in college," Dr. Abar reported. Dr. Abar's study conflicts with conventional wisdom that it is best not to make alcohol into a "forbidden fruit" and better to drink with your children at home, the way some European families do.

A previous study from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center found that teenagers whose parents gave them alcohol at parties were three times more likely to binge drink in college.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 87 percent of college students have experimented with alcohol and 40 percent say they regularly engage in binge drinking, which is defined as having five or more drinks at one sitting.

Labels: teenage_drinking, binge drinking, college_students

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Some college officials are advocating a lowering of the national drinking age 21 to 18. The debate is drawing considerable amounts of criticism.

"...in 1984, President Ronald Regan signed into law the National Uniform Drinking Age 21 Act. The change helped to decrease fatal crashes by 59 percent between 1982 and 1998, saving thousands of lives in the process. In addition, a 1998 study showed 10 years after the age was raised to 21 in New York, 58 percent of people 18, 19, and 20 reported reduced drinking, while impaired driving rates decreased."

Studies have also shown that the brain continues to develop until a person reaches about 25 years of age, meaning young drinkers risk impeding the development process. The liver is also not fully developed, which means that alcohol has a stronger adverse affect on teenagers than it does on adults. Source: The Buffalo News

Read the Pros and Cons of Lowering the Legal Drinking Age

Labels: drinking_age, college_students

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South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds has announced that September is "Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month." Several events are planned throughout the month, and recovery booths will be set up on college campuses throughout the state.

"This past year in South Dakota, 14,986 individuals sought recovery from some form of addiction. If an individual is interested in seeking recovery from alcoholism, drug addiction or gambling addiction, there are 61 providers across South Dakota to assist them in recovery."

Additional activities will include a "Fun Night" in the city of Mitchell for people who are recovering from alcohol or drug addiction. Source: State News Web

Drug Rehab Resources

Labels: addiction, recovery, college_students

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Male college students are more likely to commit property crimes and abuse substances than males of the same age not enrolled in universities, according to a new study from Bowling Green University.

For purposes of the study, "college student" was defined as a male enrolled in a four-year university program.

Peggy Giordano and Stephen Cernkovich, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, examined information about 9,245 middle and high school students. The college-bound students had lower levels of criminal activity and substance abuse in grades 7 through 12 than the non-college-bound, but they did worse than the other group once they enrolled in universities.

Labels: boys, college_students, risky_behaviors

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An Associated Press analysis of government records found that alcohol poisonings among young adults doubled between 1999 and 2005, the last years for which statistics are available.

The study, which looked at college-aged adults, ages 18 to 23 years, found that more than 80 percent of victims were under age 21, and most were males. Death rates increased on weekends.

In 1999, 18 young people drank themselves to death, compared to 35 in 2005. In nearly every case, the person died when he or she was "sleeping it off." In 40 percent of the cases, there was a criminal investigation as to how the young adult was served too much alcohol.

One reason more young people are dying by alcohol poisoning may be the popular practice of having 21 alcoholic drinks on a person's 21st birthday.

Read "Beer Pong" and "21 Ritual" Can Be Deadly to learn more.

Labels: alcohol_abuse, college_students, binge_drinking

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This weekend, the University of Virginia (UVa) will host APPLE  Athletic Prevention Programming and Leadership Education  a conference aimed at sharing the UVa substance abuse prevention model that was developed for athletic teams. Representatives from about 40 colleges and universities are expected to attend.

"[Co-director Susan] Bruce said she hopes those schools will then be able to follow the University's example to develop and implement their own substance abuse programs. 'One of the exciting things about the conference is that many of the attendees will be student-athletes,' Bruce said."

One of the keynote speakers at this year's conference, Travis Apgar, Associate Dean of Students at Cornell University, will discuss hazing and its detrimental effects on students' mental health.

Labels: prevention, athletics, college_students

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According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan Substance Abuse Research Center, 10 percent of college use stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall illegally at some point. Typically used to treat ADHD, illegal use of these drugs jumped 20 percent between 2004 and 2005.

"'Most students who use their friends stimulants do it to improve performance,' said Scott Teitelbaum, M.D., medical director of the Florida Recovery Center at UF. 'It's like athletes taking steroids - the idea that you can study better, harder, longer, as if you were hitting a ball farther.'"

Students who abuse prescription drugs are often already behind in school, which is why they need to cram. Overall, their academic performance is worse than that of other students. Abuse of prescription drugs has increased sharply in the past several years, and is now more common that the uses of crack/cocaine, Ecstasy, heroin and methamphetamine combined.

Read more at News-Medical.net.

Labels: stimulants, prescription_drugs, college_students

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