Teen Use of Illicit Drugs Falls; Use of Pharmaceuticals Rises

Use of illicit drugs by America’s teens has dropped more than 23 percent in the last five years. At the same time teen abuse of medicines, both over-the-counter and prescription drugs, is rising. Nearly one in 10 high school seniors used the narcotic painkiller Vicodin without a prescription and nearly 1 in 20 used the painkiller Oxycontin, according to the newly released Monitoring the Future Study.

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New Strategy to Deal with Drunk Driving - Ignition Interlocks

The threat of arrest and punishment for drunk drivers is no longer working and MADD, backed by a national association of state highway officials and car manufacturers has launched a campaign to require even first offenders to install a device that tests drivers and shuts down the car if it detects alcohol.
Last year New Mexico made ignition interlocks mandatory after a first offense. The state was an 11.2% drop in alcohol-related fatalities last year. (Article abstract available to read. The complete article is available for purchase.)

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Evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Shows It Ineffective

An evaluation of the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign provides credible evidence that t he campaign was not effective in reducing youth drug use, according to the GAO.

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Report on Underage Drinking by College Students

SAMHSA has released the NSDUH Report: Underage Alcohol Use Among full-time College Students. According to the report, rates of past month, binge, and heavy alcohol use remained steady from 2002 to 2005.

• 58% of full-time college students who were underage for legal drinking used alcohol in the past month,
• 40% engaged in binge drinking, and
• 17% in heavy drinking.

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The Effects of Jimson Weed:

“Hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, mad as a hatter.”

Teenagers seeking a hallucinogenic high from the seeds of the jimson weed are landing in hospitals around the country. Fall is prime time for the legal plant that can grow nearly anywhere. It can cause severe hallucinations, dry mouth, overheating agitation, urinary retention. Overdoses can lead to seizures, comas, or death. The use of jimson weed rarely becomes a drug trend because few people use it twice.

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Meth Lab Threat to the Environment

Individual states are enacting tough regulations that require former lab sites to undergo a formal safety assessment. Colorado is at the forefront, forcing property owners not only to have the mess cleaned up but to adhere to a very specific set of procedures and testing requirements.

Meth is potent enough to transform homes into hazmat zones. Cooking meth just once contaminates a building with traces of acids and iodine in the air, as well as large amounts of meth on surfaces ranging from sofas to ventilation ducts.
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Parental Drug Use as Child Abuse

Here’s a handy document. Approximately 45 states, D.C., and Guam have laws within their child protection statutes that address the issue of substance abuse by parents. This 4 page document is downloadable. At this location you can also look up statute information for a particular state. 

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Buyers Beware of Toxic Meth Lab Homes

Health officials in a handful of states are warning home buyers and renters to check an online database of  meth houses to make sure they don’t move into a contaminated former drug lab. It is illegal in 12 states for anyone to live in a former meth house before it has been decontaminated, but in most other states there are few protections to warn home buyers or renters.

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Liquor Shots Sold in Pocket Packs

The Pocket Shot Company is marketing single-serve liquor shots in flexible lined pouches and touting their convenience. Each pouch contains 50 ml of 80 proof liquor.

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Methamphetamine: The Child Welfare Impact and Response

Presentations from this Children’s Bureau conference held in May are now posted on this site to read or download.

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2005 Survey on Drug Use and Health

This report provides the latest data on prevalence and correlates of substance use, serious mental illness, related problems, and treatment in the US.  The survey indicates that while some baby boomers who were in their teens and 20s when drug-use rates peaked in  the 1970s are taking their drug habits well into middle age, today’s youth aren’t embracing drugs as enthusiastically.

• Illicit drug use among baby boomers 50-59 rose 63% from 2002 to 2005.
• Drug use among youths 12-17 fell slightly for the third straight year, with 9.9% reporting illicit drug use during the previous month in 2005 compared with 10.6% in 2004. 11.2% in 2003, and 11.6% in 2002.

Read an article about the survey here.

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The Importance of Family Dinners

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) in a new report finds that teens having two or fewer family dinners per week are twice as likely to smoke daily and get drunk monthly.

Compared to parents who say their families have dinners together frequently, those who have infrequent family dinners are:

• Five times likelier to say they have a fair or poor relationship with their teen
• One and a half times likelier to say they know the parents of their teen’s friends not very well or not at all;
• More than twice as likely to say they do not know the names of their teen’s teachers; and
• Twice as likely to say that parents deserve not very much blame or no blame at all when a teenager uses illegal drugs.

The more often children and teens eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke drink or use drugs. Here is a link to Ten Benefits of Frequent Family Dinners.

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Blueprint for the States

Join Together  presents this summary of its Blueprint Report which contains a broad set of recommendations for optimizing state governments to effectively address alcohol and other drug problems in communities.
Click here to read an article about the Blueprint Report.

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Addressing Early Onset Alcohol Dependency

A study reported in the September 2006 issue of Pediatrics says that individuals who become alcohol dependent before age 25 are less likely to seek treatment than those who become dependent at age 30 or older. They are more likely to have multiple dependence episodes of longer duration and to meet more dependence diagnostic criteria.

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Prevention Programs in Middle School Can Reduce Meth Use

Research supported by NIDA says prevention programs conducted in middle school can reduce meth use among rural adolescents years later. The study appears in the September issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

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Methamphetamine and Child Welfare

The National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning has put up a very nice set of resource pages for meth and child welfare, including a curriculum for meth basics and worker safety.

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CASA’s Annual Back-to-School Survey of Teen Substance Abuse Finds Parents Self-Deluded and Unaware of the World Their Teens Live In

From the survey:

• 80% of parents believe that neither alcohol nor marijuana is usually available at parties their teens attend. BUT, 50% of teen partygoers attend parties where alcohol, drugs or both are available.
• 98% of parents say they are normally present during parties they allow their teens to have at home. BUT, a third of teen partygoers report that parents are rarely or never present at the parties they attend.

The survey includes other information of interest:

• At every age girls are found to be at equal or higher substance abuse risk compared to boys of the same age.
• One in four (26%) 17-year-olds will personally know someone their age that was the victim of gun violence and 27% will have personally witnessed drug sales in their neighborhood.

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NIDA Study Results Support Prison Treatment Programs

NIDA says that locking up people with addictions is no cure. Instead, it advocates the use of effective treatment in criminal justice settings. The NIDA report urges more use of methadone and other addiction medications, it endorses using pressure tactics to keep offenders in treatment, and drug testing to track treatment progress and prevent relapse. The study includes a list of principles of drug abuse treatment for criminal justice populations.

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Fentanyl Linked to Recent Clusters of Drug Overdoses and Deaths in U.S.

CESAR FAX presents this one page review the use of illicitly manufactured fentanyl combined with heroin din an outbreak of overdoses and deaths reported in a number of east cost and Midwest cities.

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