The program, an effort of Germany’s Jena University Institute of Psychology and the Center for Applied Developmental Science, is aimed at helping strengthen preventative efforts so that kids are prepared before they give that first refusal. In the U.S., the average age for a first use of cigarettes is 13.

Called IPSY, meaning Information and Psychosocial Competence, presents life skills for saying no to drugs and alcohol and has been introduced in hundreds of schools internationally to children ages 10 to 15. The core principles of the program are centered around boosting students’ self-perceptions and ways to handle the natural stress that comes with growing up. Set up in a module format, facilitators use role playing and relaxation practices to build stronger ties between students and their school. Both genders can learn the IPSY program skills, and teachers have reported positive results as well.

As explained in recent news reports, research on the program outcomes shows that children who went through the IPSY program are experimenting with cigarettes or alcohol at a later age, as compared to their peers who may try the substances sooner. Published in the Journal of Early Adolescence, findings also suggest they’re also not showing as great a rise in usage of cigarettes or alcohol as they progress in age, in comparison to students who did not participate in IPSY.

Marczinski and colleagues from Northern Kentucky University arranged for 56 university students between the ages of 21 and 33 to sample an alcoholic drink, an energy drink, a combo of the two, or a placebo. All drinks were mixed to taste very similar and the students didn’t know which drink they were handed.

After about 45 minutes, Marczinski started noticing a change in behavior. After downing their drinks, students’ responses and reflexes were tested. All subjects who consumed alcohol exhibited some measure of impairment. Each was also asked to rate how they were feeling with regard to how tired or awake they were and if they considered themselves impaired in any way. The interesting conclusion was that individuals who consumed energy drinks mixed with alcohol did not perceive themselves to be impaired. They also reported being twice as stimulated as those drinking alcohol by itself.

Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida College of Medicine has also done research on the subject. His experience shows that students consuming alcoholic beverages mixed with energy drinks are more likely to take risks like driving under the influence. Goldberger adds that data from other related studies indicates that these individuals are also at higher risk of violent behavior, risky sexual practices, and assault.

He also says that young people have the false belief that caffeine will help them stay sober. The realization is that caffeine and alcohol affect two totally different areas of the brain. They do not offset one another.

Marczinski believes that the results of the study show that young adults may benefit from warning labels being placed on energy drinks indicating that they are not safe when mixed with alcohol. In fact, in November 2010, the FDA banned the pre-made alcoholic energy beverage, Four Loko, stating manufacturers had violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. This raises the question, then, why is it perfectly legal to serve the combo in bars?

According to Marczinski, the problem with energy drinks is not just the caffeine, although they can have three times the amount found in such drinks as Rum and Coke. The other issue is all the additives in energy drinks that increase alertness such as guarana, taurine, glucose, and ginseng. Together with caffeine, they are powerful stimulants. Our bodies natural mechanism lets us know when we should stop consuming alcohol because we begin to feel the effects and get tired. Energy drinks mask those effects, making it easy to overindulge.

The study also has implications for the younger generation of teenagers who may be combining alcohol with energy drinks. This age group has already been shown to be at increased risk for precarious behaviors such as binge drinking and caffeine overdoses. In addition, Senator Charles Schumer cites recent data suggesting that underage drinkers who add energy drinks to the mix are at higher risk of injury, sexual assault, driving under the influence, and needing medical attention than those drinking decaffeinated beverages.

A new authoritative study published November 1 in the esteemed medical journal The Lancet is naming alcohol as the leading cause of adverse consequences on a societal level. Lead researcher David Nutt of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit of Imperial College in London and his colleagues from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and London School of Economics and Political Science’s Department of Management held a conference with specialists and members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs to gain consensus on various drugs’ levels of harm. Twenty drugs of abuse were assessed based on 16 different criteria from a standard Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Of the 16 criteria, nine were related to the dangers that drug misuse causes an individual—such as mental impairment, emotional strain, loss of relationships, and death—while the remaining seven criteria were related to the dangers that drug misuse cause to others—such as economic costs, loss of productivity, cost of addiction treatment, broken families, and accidental death. Using the MCDA, the experts considered each drug’s potential for harm on a 100-point scale.

The decisions of the consensus, the researchers advise, could theoretically help UK policymakers reclassify controlled substances according to their potential for harm from least to greatest. If such policy reformation were to occur based on the study’s findings, alcohol would become reclassified as a Class A substance, sharing the categorization with heroin and crack cocaine.

The results of their analysis found heroin, methamphetamine, and crack cocaine to be the most harmful substances of abuse for individuals. However, when considering a drug’s potential for harm to others, alcohol, heroin, and crack cocaine respectively were labeled as the most dangerous. Overall, alcohol was overwhelmingly named as the most harmful drug, scoring a total of 72 points out of 100 in the analysis, followed by heroin at 55 and crack cocaine at 54. Other drugs of abuse considered were crystal meth ranking 33, cocaine (27), tobacco (26), amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20), GHB (18), benzodiazepines (15), ketamine (15), methadone (13), butane (10), qat (9), ecstasy (9), anabolic steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine (6), and mushrooms (5).

Nutt was a former government adviser who chaired the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs but was removed last year for making several controversial statements regarding drug use—calling ecstasy less dangerous than it is currently classified as, and suggesting that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than cannabis and LSD. In 2007, Nutt and his colleagues published a similar study on the levels of harm caused by various drugs, which incited differences among the government agency. This latest study updates their findings of the previous drug analysis, lifting alcohol to the number one ranking of most dangerous drugs. Because the patterns of recreational drug use can change over time, Nutt recommends that the levels of danger should be reevaluated every couple of years to stay relevant. The new study suggests that the current drug classification system in place at the UK government should be completely renovated, instead ranking drugs based on their level of harm in an effort to protect public safety. Reformers agree that the UK’s Misuse of Drugs Act needs to be reassessed and that the government should take a more evidenced-based approach to regulation and enforcement of drug laws.

With recent rises in alcohol-related problems across the UK, including addiction, injury, and crime, advocates of drug law reformation agree that more emphasis should be placed on the dangers of alcohol use. Although heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamine cause substantial danger to individual drug users—and provisions are and should be made for their related problems—the same level of precaution for alcohol dangers is currently not in place, even though alcohol is considered to cause significantly more damage to society. According to Nutt and his team, higher priority should be given to those drugs that cause greater harm.

The government will be announcing its latest decisions on drug regulation strategy, including its policy on alcohol, within coming months.

Sources: CNN, Study: Alcohol ‘most harmful drug,’ followed by crack and heroin, November 1, 2010

Guardian UK, Sarah Boseley, Alcohol ‘more harmful than heroin or crack’

Now, colleges across the nation are realizing the wave of a new threat to student health that has gained widespread popularity: manufactured caffeinated alcoholic beverages. These drinks contain added caffeine content and other energy-boosting ingredients (much like energy drinks) but are already combined with alcohol, often in excessive amounts. These caffeine-alcohol concoctions come from a variety of smaller brewing companies—one in particular known as Phusion Projects which produces 23.5-ounce alcoholic energy drinks called Four, Four Loko, and Four Maxed. The Four beverage and its similarities each contain 156 milligrams of caffeine (1.5 times more caffeine than an 8-oz. cup of coffee) and 12% alcohol (2.82 oz.)—the equivalent of nearly six bottled beers—in a single can intended for 2.5 servings. The appealingly colorful, graphically designed cans blend in with other soft drinks on convenience store shelves, often leading to confusion about their dangerous potential, and are highly accessible to young drinkers at the affordable price of $2.50.

Caffeinated alcoholic beverages have led to overdose, heart attack, and even death among some young drinkers. A June 2008 study by Wake Forest University found users of caffeinated alcoholic beverages have an increased risk for hazardous behaviors such as risky sexual activity, aggressiveness, assault/violence, drunk driving, or other alcohol-related injuries, compared to drinkers who do not use caffeinated alcoholic products. For the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been continually investigating manufacturers of the alcoholic energy drinks as it considers banning such products.

The danger of combining caffeine, a stimulant substance, with alcohol, a depressant, causes different mechanisms to occur in the brain. Because the brain becomes more alert due to the caffeine content, users of alcoholic energy drinks are rather unaware of how intoxicated they actually are. The caffeine only lowers the subjective onset of inebriation, causing the drinker to feel safe in consuming more in order to obtain the same high from alcohol they normally experience, yet in reality they are consuming much more alcohol than they are used to. The alcoholic ‘buzz’ feeling—like dizziness or headache—is masked by the caffeine, but the user’s psychomotor skills are still significantly impaired by the alcohol. The caffeine-alcohol combination causes drinkers to become more intoxicated than normal, and a much faster rate. The alcoholic energy drinks have gained the reputation as being ‘cocaine in a can’ because of this ‘alert drunkenness’ effect.

In 2008, the major breweries Anheuser-Busch and Miller discontinued the inclusion of caffeinated ingredients in their popular alcoholic energy drinks Tilt, Bud Extra, and Sparks due to their dangerous health risks and market appeal to younger drinkers. Following the settlement between the major breweries and attorneys general, the sale of alcoholic energy drinks produced by smaller breweries hit an all-time market high, leading the FDA to shift its focus on multiple products like Four Loko. Several state attorneys generals petitioned the FDA to ban alcoholic energy drinks altogether because of the negative effects caused to average consumers—college students.

In November 2009, the FDA sent letters to 27 manufacturers of these drinks requesting evidence of whether caffeine can safely and lawfully be added to alcoholic beverages. Under current food additive regulations, the FDA does not allow the mixing of caffeine with alcohol in consumer products. So far, 19 of the breweries have responded to the FDA’s request. The FDA is currently evaluating the results of these submissions, and advises that it may take some time before any regulatory decisions are made. Meanwhile, the caffeine-alcohol drinks remain available for sale, and critics are reproaching the FDA for not taking more serious measures to guard the public’s health.

But college campuses do not need to wait around for a federal ruling when it comes to protecting student safety. Ramapo College in New Jersey recently officially banned the use of alcoholic energy drinks by its study body. Since the start of the fall semester, 23 students from the college have been hospitalized for alcohol-related overdose after drinking caffeinated alcoholic beverages. The college’s administrators hope that their decision will encourage other campuses to make similar efforts to protect students, and bring more awareness to students in general.

Furthermore, the states of New Jersey and New Mexico may be banning the sale of these drinks altogether due to their hazardous potential. In early October 2010, a 19-year-old healthy college athlete was rushed to the emergency department at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia after suffering a heart attack caused by his consumption of alcoholic energy drinks. In some cases, the drinks have even led to death. Experts from the Human Performance Laboratory believe the mixture of alcohol with stimulants can lead to cardiopulmonary and cardiovascular failures. Both caffeine and alcohol act as diuretics; when the two substances are combined together in great amounts, the result could lead to excessive dehydration.

Source: USA Today, Allie Grasgreen, Alcohol and caffeine drinks: The next student health problem, Alcohol and caffeine drinks: The next student health problem, October 24, 2010

Lead researcher Dr. Peter Snyder from The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and colleagues conducted a 2-day experiment measuring the participants’ rising and declining BAC levels during intoxication and the impacts on their executive cognitive functions. Previously, similar alcohol studies had only measured the impact of alcohol on basic functions such as motor speed and information processing speed, yet Snyder’s study became the first to consider executive functions. In the study, 20 participating college students consumed alcoholic beverages over an 8-hour period in order to bring their BAC near 0.10 percent and then down to normal levels.

During their varying rising and falling BAC levels, participants were required to complete on-screen computer maze learning exams. For sober, healthy young adults (whom served as the placebo group), the hidden maze exam was completed with few errors. However, the participants displayed progressively higher rates of error while following simple directions during the exam with increasing BAC levels. Regardless of their self-reported feelings of sobriety, the participants’ likelihood to commit errors did not decline as progressively as their subjective feeling of drunkenness. The researchers conclude that the participants’ executive functions were not recovering as quickly as the participants believed, but were instead more closely related to their actual BAC levels, putting them at greater risk of committing error.

While basic functions are able to recover in a shorter time span following drunkenness, executive functions—the cognitive functioning involved in driving skills and making judgments regarding traveling through intersections or changing lanes—are not able to recover as quickly. According to the study, the perception of recovery from drunkenness progressed more rapidly than the drinker’s actual cognitive recovery, which may explain why many drunk drivers make the erroneous conclusion that they are fit to drive.

With an average of 17,000 deaths caused by alcohol-impaired vehicular accidents every year in the U.S., too many drunk drivers get behind the wheel believing they are more sober than they really are. Sixteen to 20-year-old male drivers face a twofold chance of a vehicular accident after raising their BAC by 0.02 percent; even further, their risk increases 52 times when their BAC becomes 0.08–0.10 percent. The researchers hope that their findings will influence alcohol education programs for college-aged adults to help better inform these drivers of the risks involving drinking and driving.

The study is published in the August 2010 issue of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, a publication of the American Psychological Association.

Breast cancer can occur in different parts of the breast, including the milk ducts, lobules, or (rarely) connective tissues, and cancers can be either invasive or noninvasive. Ductal cancer is the most common type of breast cancer, attributing to almost 70% of all breast cancer cases. Lobular cancer, on the other hand, affects approximately 10–15% of breast cancer cases. Furthermore, some cancer cells obtain their energy from women’s naturally occurring hormones—estrogen and progesterone. Breast cancers can be estrogen receptor-positive (cancer cells use estrogen to grow), progesterone receptor-positive (cancer cells use progesterone to grow), or hormone receptor-negative (the cancer does not grow using hormonal cells).

Using the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study, lead researcher Dr. Christopher Li and colleagues observed 87,724 postmenopausal women in their study to measure their likelihood of developing breast cancer subtypes. Women were between the ages of 50 and 79 years from 1993 to 1998, were cancer-free, and had self-reported on their alcohol consumption at the time of their initial consultation. Women were classified as nondrinkers, prior drinkers, or current drinkers. Women who were considered current drinkers were grouped into six categories, depending on how much alcohol they consumed. Alcohol consumption ranged from a maximum of 1 drink per week to at least 14 drinks per week.

Then, the researchers followed up with the women in September 2005 to assess the prevalence of various breast cancer types. A total of 2,944 cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed among the study’s sample. Researchers evaluated this group’s tumor subtype status, hormone status, family medical history, reproductive history, demographics, alcohol consumption, and lifestyle. As a result, alcohol consumption shared a positive relationship with invasive breast cancer overall, as well as invasive lobular cancer and hormone receptor-positive tumors. Compared to nondrinkers, women who were current drinkers and consumed an average of seven or more drinks per week had a doubled risk of hormone receptor-positive invasive lobular breast cancer. However, the researchers did not find a significant disparity among drinkers and nondrinkers’ risk when it came to ductal type breast cancer, the most common subtype.

The researchers’ study affirms the findings of previous research that have linked alcohol consumption with an increased risk of hormone receptor-positive subtypes than hormone receptor-negative subtypes, as well as increased risk of lobular cancer. Although the researchers note that alcohol consumption levels of the study’s diagnosed women were not reevaluated following their initial report, they suggest that a distinct relationship exists between alcohol use and breast cancer risk. These women did not appear to have heightened levels of risk based on their varying levels of alcohol consumption, but being current alcohol consumers alone put them at a twofold risk of these specific breast cancer subtypes.

Source: Medical News Today, Alcohol Consumption Linked To Subtypes Of Breast Cancer, But Not All, August 24, 2010

Tom Randall of Bloomberg writes that the compulsive tanners met psychological criteria for addiction gauged by two different measurers, according to the study published today by the medical journal, Archives of Dermatology. About 42 percent of tanning addicts reported using more than one drug in the previous month, twice the rate of casual tanners.

Indoor tanning can cause skin cancer, premature skin aging and eye damage, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The health overhaul signed by President Barack Obama last month will charge customers a 10 percent tax effective in July. But curbing the habits of these undergraduates may prove more difficult than previously thought, researchers wrote in the study.

“Results suggest that treating an underlying mood disorder may be a necessary step in reducing cancer risk among those who frequently tan indoors,” wrote the researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the State University of New York, Albany. “Individuals who use drugs may be more likely to develop dependence on indoor tanning because of a similar addictive process.”

The study evaluated 421 college students in 2006. The students answered surveys designed to evaluate drug addiction. The surveys were modified to measure tanning addiction.

Questions included: “Do you ever feel guilty that you are using tanning beds or booths too much?” and “Do you try other non-tanning-related activities but find you really still like spending time in tanning beds or booths best of all?”

Published online today in the journal Biological Psychiatry, researchers also found that those who drank a large amount of alcohol before a traumatic event did not report an increase in the number of flashbacks.

"Many people who experience a personally traumatic event such as rape or a road traffic accident have consumed alcohol beforehand. For the first time, this research gives us an idea of how being under the influence of alcohol might contribute to our wellbeing later on," said James Bisby, from UCL’s Department of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, who led the research.

Scientists believe that the findings can be attributed to how alcohol affects two types of memory: one that is egocentric, providing a visual ‘snapshot’ of an event, and another that stores a mental representation of the context of the event, which is independent of the person’s viewpoint.

The authors of the study suggest that contextual memory is reduced in those who experience high levels of stress and this reduction may be exaggerated in those who have had a couple of glasses of wine (around three units). This allows egocentric memories to be involuntarily re-experienced—resulting in more flashbacks. In those that have drunk seven or more units of alcohol both types of memory are disrupted leading to fewer flashbacks and an overall reduction in memory for the event.

During the study, nearly 50 participants consumed either alcohol or a placebo drink and then performed a virtual reality task designed to examine how an experienced event is stored within memory. They were then shown a video of serious road traffic accidents and recorded the number of times they spontaneously re-experienced any of the footage, i.e. had a flashback, over the following 7 days.

"People who had been given a small amount of alcohol showed reductions in memory that relies on contextual aspects of an event, whereas memory based on an egocentric representation was intact. However, those individuals given a higher dose of alcohol showed a global reduction in memory with decreases in both types of memory," explained James Bisby.

Although the findings suggest that drinking a large amount of alcohol might result in less involuntary re-experiencing of the event due to an overall reduction in memory, the researchers are cautious in drawing this conclusion.

"When people have no memory of the traumatic event, as can happen if they consumed a large amount of alcohol beforehand, they are more likely to imagine a ‘worse case scenario.’ This alone can prove to be extremely distressing and debilitating for the individual involved. We are currently extending our findings to try and provide a clearer picture of alcohol’s ability to affect memory during trauma," explained Professor Valerie Curran, also from the UCL Department of Clinical, Educational & Health Psychology, and a co-author of the research.

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

This year, 19.4% of high school seniors said they had smoked marijuana at some point in the prior 30 days, as did 13.8% of 10th-graders and 5.8% of eighth-graders. Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times reports that this downward trend has stalled in the last two years, and kids’ attitudes suggest a reversal may be ahead.

In 1991, 58% of eighth graders said they thought occasional marijuana use was harmful. By last year, that number had fallen to 48%, and this year, to 45%.

In a Washington, D.C., news conference Monday, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske called such numbers "a warning sign."

"When beliefs soften, drug use worsens," said Kerlikowske, whose office is expected to release its first policy initiatives to combat and treat drug abuse in February.

University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnston, who oversees the annual survey, said there was "serious softening" in the perceived risks of LSD, inhalants and the party drug Ecstasy—a sign that "a new generation of kids are interested…in rediscovering these drugs, because they don’t understand why they shouldn’t be using them."

Johnston also flagged a phenomenon the survey has recently begun to track—“extreme binge drinking," or the consumption of more than 10 drinks on a single occasion. They survey’s findings suggest that such high-risk drinking is not unusual among older teens.

Binge drinking, defined as consumption of five drinks or more in a row, has declined since peaking in 1983. But Johnston said there has been "not much decline" in numbers of extreme binge drinkers.

Among high school seniors, 11% said they had drunk 10 drinks or more in a row in the two weeks prior to the survey; 6% said they’d had 15 or more.

Healy writes that the survey also showed that U.S. adolescents continue to raid their parents’ and friends’ medicine chests. Use of prescription painkillers is at an all-time high: 10% of high-school seniors reported taking Vicodin for nonmedical reasons in the last year, and 5% reported taking OxyContin.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has commissioned the survey for 35 years, said at the news conference that teen use of prescription stimulant drugs is holding steady, with just over 7% of 10th- and 12th-graders reporting they had taken amphetamines for nonmedical reasons. Volkow said that in many cases, teens take these drugs before tests or study sessions as "cognitive enhancers." Although fewer kids reported taking Ritalin, much of that decline was because kids had merely shifted to Adderall, a newer ADHD drug.

The officials said that youths report some confidence that prescription drugs are less harmful than street drugs.

In the survey’s first accounting of where kids get drugs, it found that 66% who reported illicit drug use said they got the drugs from a friend or relative. Almost 19% said they got drugs with a doctor’s prescription.

Research into this area also revealed that more than one third of 11-year-old boys have consumed alcohol. Brain development experts are becoming alarmed, claiming an entire generation of young people is destroying their chance of reaching their full potential. In fact, cases of alcohol-related harm overall in Victoria have risen 77 percent from 1995 to 2005.

Many are pointing to liberal licensing laws as the cause of this epidemic of alcohol-fuelled injury and violence. As a result, family groups and adolescent experts are calling for the legal drinking age to be raised to 21.

Victoria Police statistics found that assaults in Melbourne rose 44 percent to close to 2,500 cases a year. Cases for hospitalization due to alcohol-related harm more than doubled from 11,571 to 23,144 between 1995 and 2005. In addition, the number of licensed premises in Victoria increased from 2,000 to 24,000.

Dr. Michael Carr-Gregg, adolescent psychologist, believes a rise in the drinking age is long overdue and cited the decrease in alcohol-related harm that occurred when the age was raised in Washington D.C.

Gabrielle Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Australian Family Association, asked for controls to be put on the spread of licensed venues. She also recommended a consideration in moving the legal drinking age to 21.

The concern for underage drinking – especially underage binge drinking – is very real. Already there has been a sharp rise in the number of women in their 20s being diagnosed with alcohol-acquired brain injury.