The survey is administered annually. In the most recent survey, over 45,000 students reported from almost 400 schools across the country. The survey targets eighth, 10th and 12th graders who are given the survey by researchers at the University of Michigan.

The recently released results show that trends are shifting in the attitudes teens have about drugs and their use of them. One area that showed significant improvement is the use of methamphetamine. Only 1.2 percent of students reported having used methamphetamine in the last year, which is the lowest rate since the questions regarding methamphetamine were added in 1999. In addition, fewer students say that methamphetamine is easily obtainable, compared with five years ago (14 percent versus 19.5 percent).

Another significant shift showed that cigarette smoking is at its lowest for all three ages in the history of the survey. Only 2.7 percent of eighth graders identified themselves as daily smokers, as compared with 10.4 percent in 2006. However, there is concern regarding the rise in smokeless tobacco use reflected in the recent survey. The rate of 10th graders using smokeless tobacco was higher than it was last year.

NIDA director Dr. Nora Volkow explains that this information is very important. The decline in cigarette use means longer lives for these teens, and the rise in smokeless tobacco use gives the NIDA critical information about where to focus their efforts.

Some measures on the survey were new this year. For instance, the survey included questions about the hallucinogenic salvia leaf, and the stimulant Adderall, used to treat ADHD. Many students are acquiring prescription drugs illegally, usually from a friend or relative. 5.7 percent of students reported having used the salvia leaf, and over 5 percent had also used Adderall.

The 2009 survey highlights the use of prescription and over-the-counter drugs by teenagers. Seven of the ten substances abused by the surveyed students were either prescription or over-the-counter drugs.

Although alcohol consumption has declined overall, the 2009 shows a softening of attitudes toward alcohol, with fewer students identifying binge drinking as a dangerous behavior.

The information provided by the survey of high school students is critical in helping the government decide how to allocate funds for education and prevention. As the attitudes of the teen population shifts, the focus of education and prevention will be able to shift with them.
 

German researchers decided to take a closer look at the phenomenon and their findings were reported in a recent Science Daily release. In their study, these researchers determined that high school students were experiencing greater numbers of migraines and tension-type headaches (TTH) due to alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking.

The researchers also found drinking coffee and a consistent physical inactivity to be linked with migraines. They were attempting to identify modifiable risk factors for the variety of headaches reported in the youth population.

In previous studies, researchers had found that headaches are the most often reported health complaint among youth as 5 to 15 percent of this age group appears to suffer from migraines and 15 to 25 percent deal with TTH. Until now, studies did not fully explore modifiable risk factors in the younger population.

In a study of 1,260 students in the 10th and 11th grades, researchers determined that 83.1 percent reported a headache at least one time in the previous six months. Of those 83.1 percent, 10.2 percent reported a migraine, 48.7 percent reported TTH and 19.8 percent reported experiencing a combination of the two.

An examination of diet revealed that 28.4 percent of the students studied never ate breakfast; 16.5 percent refrained from consuming any type of snack throughout the day; and only 24 percent took part in a warm lunch every day.

Alcohol consumption was widespread, however, as 38.5 percent of students consumed beer, 18.6 percent enjoyed wine; and 25.3 percent took part in cocktails at least once a week. Interestingly, 73.3 percent reported that they never smoked and 43.4 percent of students did not drink coffee.
 

A critical turning point in life is during the teen years, where an individual makes decisions that can affect their lives for many years. One of the most critical decisions a teenager can make is whether to use drugs and alcohol. Every day in the United States, many teens make the wrong choice.

The Office of Applied Studies (OAS) in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) manages four national data collections that give information about adolescent drug use and treatment.

Based on the four data collections, in 2008 almost one third of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 drank alcohol in the past year, approximately one fifth used drugs, and one sixth smoked cigarettes.

Despite reports of a decline in alcohol, drugs and cigarette use among teens between 2002 and 2008, the number of adolescents struggling remains steady. The number of teens treated for substance abuse was consistent across the years, and the number of adolescents treated in an emergency room for substance abuse was stable from 2004 to 2008.

In 2008, among teens aged between 12 and 17, 10.2 percent drank alcohol for the first time during the last year, and 6.0 percent tried an illicit drug for the first time. This equates to 7,540 teens trying alcohol for the first time, and 4,365 teens trying an illicit drug for the first time.

Marijuana was the most popular illicit drug, followed by prescription drugs.

SAMHSA’s data also reports that 8 million adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 drank alcohol in the past year in 2008, nearly 5 million used an illicit drug, and almost 4 million smoked cigarettes.
Among adolescents who used alcohol, the 2008 data shows that an average of 4.6 drinks per day were consumed, and that among those who used cigarettes, 4.4 cigarettes per day were smoked on the days that they smoked.
Treatment programs admitted 141,683 cases that were aged 12 to 17 in 2008. On an average day, treatment programs admitted 263 teens for marijuana treatment, and 76 teens for alcohol treatment, in addition to treating teens for stimulants and other illegal substances. The most common source of referral to treatment programs is the criminal justice system. Most treatment was done on an outpatient basis.
In 2008, there were approximately 250,000 drug-related emergency room visits by teens aged 12 to 17. 169,000 of those involved the use of alcohol or an illicit drug. In addition, on any given day there were 63 teens treated in an emergency room for drug-related suicide attempts.
The decisions a teen makes during junior high and high school years can have an impact on his future, but there may be none so critical as whether that student decides to try alcohol or drugs. Based on the data gathered by SAMHSA, an overwhelming number of teens are making the wrong choice and altering their life’s course.
 

But when her children reached their late teens, she loosened the reins a little. In Georgia, where she lives, parents are allowed to let their own children have alcohol in their own homes. Jason Hanna of CNN writes that Martha now lets her 18-year-old son have a beer or a little wine at home, in part to kill curiosity, but won’t serve his friends.

Suspecting alcohol will be part of his senior prom experience, she’s having him take a limo. While planning to escort him and his friends to a rented beach house for spring break this year, she expected to have a "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy, but she wouldn’t furnish alcohol, and she’d take away their car keys.

Martha says it’s probably unrealistic for parents to forbid alcohol to older teens outright. Instead, she thinks it’s best to teach moderation, safety, and responsibility. "If you can be around your child and monitor them all the time and watch everything they do, and if it works for you and them, then [prohibit it]," said Martha, an Atlanta-area resident who spoke on condition that her last name be withheld. "But I think, given what’s out there, you have to teach them how to be safe and considerate of others."

U.S. law requires states, as a condition of getting highway funds, to prohibit people under 21 from buying or publicly possessing alcohol. Some states have situational exceptions, but no state allows people to furnish alcohol to an underage person who isn’t their child, ward, or spouse, said Mike Hilton, deputy director of the division of epidemiology and prevention research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Yet about 10.1 million people ages 12 to 20 in the United States — more than a quarter of that age group — drank at least once in a certain month’s period in 2008, according to that year’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

More than 30 percent of underage drinkers said they paid for their most recent drink; for those who didn’t pay, the most common source was 21 or older and not a relative, according to the survey for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Hanna writes that with matters of health, safety, morality, and legality to consider, what goes through parents’ minds when they determine what stance to take with their children on alcohol?

Debbie Taylor of Casper, Washington, says she told her son, Casey, that she didn’t want him to drink while underage, but that if he ever did, he was not to drive. She wishes her message had been different.

Casey Taylor was 18 when he died of alcohol poisoning in July 2002. Just two months out of high school and one month into living away from home with a roommate, he had succumbed to a challenge from friends to chug a large amount of rum, his mother said, adding that his blood-alcohol content was 0.41 percent.

Debbie Taylor, 52, said she’d never caught her son (an honor roll student and varsity football player and wrestler) drinking, but she twice found rum bottles hidden in her garage when he was 17 and suspected they were his. She threw away the first one and left the second one.

"My reasoning for leaving the second bottle there was that all of the kids are doing it, and I did it growing up," she said. If I could go back, I would make it absolutely clear that I didn’t want him drinking at all—that he was underage, that it is not legal," she added. "That’s what I did with his younger brother [then 16] after Casey died. It was made perfectly clear to him that I didn’t want him drinking at all until he was 21. And he didn’t."

Taylor joined Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2003 and is now the Wyoming chapter’s spokeswoman. She said she now believes teens aren’t ready to drink.

MADD supports the minimum drinking age of 21 years, citing numerous studies showing that it has reduced alcohol-related fatalities and injuries since it was federally mandated in the 1980s, and arguing that drinking can be harmful to teens’ still-developing brains.
Laura Dean-Mooney, MADD’s national president, said parents can prevent underage drinking by discussing rules and consequences often and early—starting around fourth grade, when peer pressure starts to kick in. She said parents can find tips on how to encourage alcohol abstinence and set rules and consequences on the MADD-operated website ThePowerOfParents.org.

"The tricky thing with letting kids in their late teens drink is that you’re not always going to be home every time they choose to drink. You’re not always going to be there to take away the keys," she said when asked whether she could understand parents who argue that absolute prohibition isn’t the way to go.

Sheri Reed, an editor with The Stir, a blog run by CafeMom about issues for mothers, says her readers give her a full range of reactions and perspectives when it comes to teens and alcohol.

Reed says the topic is important for her, in part because she’s a mother of boys ages 7 and 3, and because she’s a recovering alcoholic who started drinking in the eighth grade and has been sober for nine years.
The California resident has written that she has no intention of introducing alcohol to her children when they’re teens. She does intend to talk to her kids about her experiences and let them know that alcohol isn’t necessary for a fulfilled life.

She doesn’t know yet what her exact plan will be beyond lots of talks. But she says she doesn’t expect that she and her husband will be able to stop their children from trying alcohol before they’re 21.

"I don’t think that’s a reality in this world," Reed, 39, said. "It’s my hope that they just won’t be insane."

As for Martha of Georgia, she says she generally discourages her 18-year-old from drinking and reminds him it’s against the law outside her supervision at home. Putting him in school activities and encouraging him to study hard (she says he’s a straight-A student) helps keep him out of trouble.

"He has a good grounding in what’s healthy and what’s not. That’s what I taught my children—how to live with balance," she said. "I’ve seen people go extreme in either direction [with alcohol], and I don’t think either one is totally healthy."

Doctor Peter Delany of the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration says four percent of them buy their own alcohol.

He said many parents concentrate on other problems. "People have tended to look at illicit drugs as something worse. This is the number one drug for kids. It’s easily accessible for many of them. I think that people need to start paying attention and need to start talking to their kids and do it often," he said.

The three leading causes of death for young people are suicide, homicide, and accidents. Health experts say all those are exacerbated by alcohol use. Research also shows that teens who begin drinking before 15 are four times more likely to have alcohol problems as adults.

And there’s a bar. The bar’s name is advertised, but there are also several brands of beer advertised with neon signs in the front windows of the establishment. You walk on by, with the signs never gaining your attention, never mind registering as a threat to your child.

A new study says that your child is definitely noticing the neon signs. The study looked at outdoor alcohol advertising near schools to see what it was advertising and how that advertising was related to the use of alcohol by adolescents. Pasch, Komro, Perry, Hearst and Farbakhsh examined the relationship between advertising near schools and the effect on students’ drinking.

The researchers had two objectives when they began the study. They determined to document and describe all outdoor alcohol advertisements surrounding the school and to look at the association between the exposure to advertising in sixth grade and alcohol use, intentions, norms and attitudes in eighth grade.

The study took place in Chicago, documenting all outdoor alcohol advertisements within 1,500 feet of 63 schools for content and theme. The study used longitudinal mixed-effects regression analysis to establish an association between the alcohol advertisements used near a school in sixth grade and the behaviors, intentions, norms and attitudes exhibited two years later when the student was in eighth grade.

The participants were all sixth-grade students during the 2002-03 school year. The 2,586 participants were 37 percent black, 33 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent white. Gender was evenly split, and the average age of the participants was 12.2 years at the end of sixth grade.

The results of the study show that 931 advertisements were found within 1,500 feet of the school locations. As hypothesized, the exposure to alcohol advertising at the end of sixth grade was a reliable predictor of alcohol intentions at the end of eighth grade. The hypothesis was consistent even among those students who did not use alcohol in sixth grade.

The results of the study hold important information for parents of children at the middle school age, especially in urban settings where outdoor advertising near schools is common. The study shows how influential advertising can be on even a sixth-grader who is a non-user of alcohol.

The findings of the study show that there may be good reason to pursue restriction of alcohol advertising near schools and other places that children frequent.

The latest MBF Healthwatch survey, summarized in a Science Daily release, surprised Bupa Australia Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Christine Bennett. The long-term implications caused by alcohol on young adult brains that are not fully developed also created concern.

"Our survey suggests many Australians believe it’s acceptable to buy alcohol for teenagers and allow them to drink under parental supervision at home," Dr Bennett said in Science Daily.

"Some parents may think this is harmless; some may see this approach as a way to teach their teenage children about socially responsible drinking. But we want parents to understand that early exposure may actually be doing them damage. Evidence suggests that the earlier the age that alcohol is introduced, the greater the risk of long-term alcohol related health problems.”

Other survey results show the overwhelming acceptance among Australians in the supervised underage drinking, as well as the link between this acceptance and income. In fact, 63 percent of those earning more than $100,000 supported supervised drinking; 53 percent of people earning between $70,001 and $100,000 support it; and 48 percent of those earning between $40,001 and $70,000 also support the activity.

Dr, Bennett noted that there is a gap between the best medical evidence and parental actions. She also believes this study challenges the belief that parents are well placed to assist their children to avoid alcohol during the critical years of brain development. Early exposure to alcohol can disturb a wide range of key brain functions, which can cause permanent disruption to some of the brain’s most important integrative functions.
 

The L.A. Times recently posted an article suggesting teens are exposed to too many ads promoting alcohol on television. This concept was the conclusion of a new study from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth.

The Center analyzed more than one million alcohol industry ads between 2001 and 2004 on broadcast, cable and local television and found a significant amount of underage youth exposed to the ads.

Researchers determined that 608.591 ads were placed in 205,592 unique time slots on national cable networks. Beer and spirit ad placement increased overall and played in more time slots with more than 30 percent underage viewers.

At the same time, adolescent viewership increased by one percentage point, while beer ads increased seven percent, spirit ads increased 15 percent and alcopop ads increased 22 percent.

Lead author Dr. Paul Chung, assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA., said in a news release, “[T]he ultimate effect of their advertising strategies, intentional or not, appears to be greater exposure than might be expected if adults were the sole targets of ads.” Chung is assistant professor of pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA.

While it is unclear whether or not these ads were specifically aimed at teens or other underage youth, the increase in exposure is clearly a problem. Laws have been put in place to limit this type of advertising to 30 percent for programs with a mostly younger audience, but not all measurements are exact. Exposure to such ideas can be limited in some respects, but total control or elimination would be feeble.

A report from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), Parent Awareness of Youth Use of Cigarettes, Alcohol and Marijuana, gathers data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to present information on the prevalence, patterns and consequences of drug and alcohol use and abuse among youth aged 12 to 17 years old.

According to this data, 17 percent of youths used cigarettes in the past year, 32.0 percent used alcohol and 13.2 percent used marijuana. These findings indicate that more work needs to be done to prevent teenage consumption of these substances and parental involvement can go a long way towards success.

In combined data from 2002 to 2006, researchers found that rates of past year use of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana were similar in mother-child and father-child pairs. In mother-child pairs, 17.6 percent of youths used cigarettes, 32.5 percent used alcohol and 13.4 percent used marijuana. In father-child pairs, 15.3 percent used cigarettes, 31.5 percent used alcohol and 12.3 percent used marijuana.

Youth use of these substances was generally higher within one-parent households than within two-parent households. For instance, 20.2 percent of youths in mother-child pairs within one parent households used cigarettes in the past year, compared with 16.8 percent of youths in mother-child pairs within two-parent households. Rates overall were the highest for all three substances among youths in father-child pairs within one-parent households.

Mothers tended to be more aware of their youth’s substance use than fathers. For instance, 41.1 percent of mothers in the mother-child pairs who used marijuana in the past year were aware of their child’s marijuana use. This figure was in comparison to 32.5 percent of fathers in comparable father-child pairs.

Awareness among parents of adolescent use of cigarettes and alcohol in the past year increased with the youth’s age among both mother-child and father-child pairs. For example, 33.4 percent of mothers of youths aged 12 to 14 were aware of past year alcohol use. Another 60.5 percent of mothers with youths aged 15 to 17 were aware of alcohol use.

Among one-parent households, mothers tend to have the highest rates of awareness of their child’s past year substance use, followed by mothers in mother-child pairs within two-parent households. Fathers in father-child pairs within two-parent households were third in terms of awareness.

These findings indicate that parents need to be more aware of what their children are involved in, especially fathers. Children are often trying new things as a way of coping with situations or breaking out of stressful environments. Paying attention and asking the right questions will go a long way toward parents keeping their children away from these substances.
 

Drunk driving is a serious problem and brings with it serious consequences. In 2006, more than 1.6 million drivers were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics and it is estimated that over 11,000 people died in drunken driving related cases.

Over the past ten years, arrests of women driving under the influence increased by 28.8 percent, bringing the total to 162,493 arrests nationwide in 2007. During this same period, the DUI rate of male drivers decreased by 7.5 percent, although men are still four times more likely to be arrested for drunk driving than women.

The reason behind the increase in female drunk driving incidents may have to do with the role women play in society and how women are portrayed in the media. Television shows consistently depict housewives and young women having cocktails with friends or drinking and dancing at a club, leading a so-called glamorous life. For example, the Cosmopolitan became a household drink after it was featured in the hit television series Sex and the City. Yet, rarely in these shows do you actually see how the women get home or see one act as the designated driver.

Speaking of driving, more women drive now than they did back in the 1970s or 1980s, so it comes as no surprise that as the number of female drivers increase, so do the drunk-driving rates. Another reason more women are being caught intoxicated behind the wheel is that more women are attending college than in previous years. Even though college is a great growth period for young adults both personally and academically, one aspect many coeds may not be prepared for is the social environment, which usually involves heavy drinking.

Many young women, especially inexperienced drinkers, may not realize the affect alcohol has on their bodies and will try to keep up with their drinking peers—both men and women. However, women clear alcohol from their bodies much more slowly than men do, which can often lead them to believe they are not as drunk as they actually are. Women are also more susceptible to develop alcohol-related problems than men, and if they drink heavily as a young adult, drinking may develop into a habit as they mature.

Women absorb alcohol differently than men, and studies have shown that even when the male and female participants consumed the same amount of alcohol during the same period, a woman’s blood-alcohol level was shown to be substantially higher on a breathalyzer machine.

Driving under the influence of alcohol is detrimental not only to the driver, but to everyone else’s on the road. Someone is killed every 40 minutes due to an alcohol-related accident. Don’t let this happen to you or to your loved ones. If you’ve had too much to drink, call a cab or a sober friend. Remember, drinking and driving don’t mix.