Research Shows Early Dialogue Between Parents and Children Most Effective In Deterring Teen Tobacco, Alcohol Use

Early, substantive dialogue between parents and their grade-school age children about the ills of tobacco and alcohol use can be more powerful in shaping teen behavior than advertising, marketing or peer pressure, a University of Texas at Arlington marketing researcher has shown.

The findings of Zhiyong Yang, an associate professor of marketing in the UT Arlington College of Business, are published in a recent edition of the Journal of Business Research. Similar findings were part of a 2010 study he published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing of the American Marketing Association.
Yang's current work, "Demarketing teen tobacco and alcohol use: Negative peer influence and longitudinal roles of parenting and self-esteem," argues that parental influence is a powerful tool in dissuading children from smoking and drinking in their later teen years.

His 2010 article, "The Impact of Parenting Strategies on Child Smoking Behavior: The Role of Child Self-Esteem Trajectory," shows that dialogue between parents and teens is effective in combating risky behavior, such as tobacco and alcohol use, and that parental influences buffer the impact of other external factors such as social media and peer pressure.

"First, our conclusion is that parenting styles can be changed, and that's good news for the parents and the teens," Yang said, in a news release. "Second, our study shows that parental influence is not only profound in its magnitude, but also persistent and long-lasting over the course of a child's entire life. Effective parenting plays the critical role as a transition belt to pass normative values of society from one generation to another."

Rachel Croson, Dean of the UT Arlington College of Business, said Yang's research sheds important light on what drives behaviors and misbehaviors.

"Marketers often study how to sell more products," Croson said. "Dr. Yang's work answers some important and thorny questions about how to sell less, and what parents may be able to do to help improve their children's health and well-being."

Binge Drinking in College Can Lead to Heart Disease Later in Life

Frequent binge drinking in college can cause immediate changes in circulation that increase an otherwise healthy young adult's risk of developing cardiovascular disease later in life, according to research published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"Regular binge drinking is one of the most serious public health problems confronting our college campuses, and drinking on college campuses has become more pervasive and destructive," said Shane A. Phillips, PT, Ph.D, senior author and associate professor and associate head of physical therapy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Binge drinking is neurotoxic and our data support that there may be serious cardiovascular consequences in young adults."

College students age 18 to 25 years old have the highest rates of binge drinking episodes, with more than half engaging in binge drinking on a regular basis. Prior studies have found that binge drinking among adults age 40 to 60 years old is associated with an increase in risk for stroke, sudden cardiac death and heart attack, but the effect on younger adults has not been studied.

Researchers looked at two groups of healthy nonsmoking college students: those who had a history of binge drinking and those who abstained from alcohol. Binge drinking was defined as consuming five or more standard size drinks (12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, 1.5 ounces of 80 proof spirits or 8-9 ounces of malt liquor) in a two-hour period for males and four or more standard size drinks in a two-hour period for females. On average, the students who binge drink had six such episodes each month over four years. Abstainers were defined as having consumed no more than five drinks in the prior year. Students were also questioned about their medical history, diet, history of family alcohol abuse and frequency of binge drinking. 

The study found that the binge drinkers had impaired function in the two main cell types (endothelium and smooth muscle) that control blood flow. These vascular changes were equivalent to impairment found in individuals with a lifetime history of daily heavy alcohol consumption and can be a precursor for developing atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and other cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack and stroke.

Binge drinkers were not found to have increased blood pressure or cholesterol, which are well-established risk factors for heart disease; however, both high blood pressure and cholesterol cause changes in vascular function similar to what the students demonstrated.

Visit www.CardioSmart.org for more information on the harmful effects of heavy alcohol use on heart health or for information on teen alcohol abuse.

Visit www.cadca.org/niaaa to access a new video and publication, entitled College and Drinking: A Risky Curriculum, which highlight research on binge and heavy drinking among college-age youth.

Alcohol, Drug Use A Greater Risk for Children of Deployed Parents

A new University of Iowa study suggests that military deployment of a parent puts children at an increased risk for drinking alcohol and using drugs. 

Using data from a statewide survey of sixth, eighth, and 11th-grade students in Iowa, the researchers found an increase in 30-day alcohol use, binge drinking, using marijuana and other illegal drugs, and misusing prescription drugs among children of deployed or recently returned military parents compared to children in nonmilitary families. The increased risk was consistent across all age groups. The findings are published online in the journal Addiction. 

"We worry a lot about the service men and women and we sometimes forget that they are not the only ones put into harm's way by deployment - their families are affected, too," says Stephan Arndt, Ph.D., UI professor of psychiatry in biostatistics and senior study author. "Our findings suggest we need to provide these families with more community support." 

In 2010, almost 2 million American children had at least one parent in active military duty, according to the Department of Defense. 

A second unexpected finding was the relationship between parental deployment, disruption of children's living arrangements, and increased risk of substance use. 

"When at least one parent is deployed, there are a measurable percentage of children who are not living with their natural parents," Arndt told Medical News Today. "Some of these children go to live with a relative, but some go outside of the family, and that change in these children's living arrangements grossly affected their risk of binge drinking and marijuana use." 

The study found that for children who were not living with a parent or relative, those with a deployed parent had a risk of binge drinking that was 42 percentage points higher than a student from a nonmilitary family. In comparison, children with a deployed parent who still were living with a parent had a risk of binge drinking that was about 8 percentage points higher than children of nonmilitary families who were living with a parent. 

Because the study surveyed only Iowa children, the nature of Iowa's military population may also affect the results, Arndt notes. In Iowa, along with Vermont, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, the largest portion of military personnel serve with the Reserve or the National Guard. These groups of military personnel live in civilian communities rather than on military bases and may have limited access to support services and resources designed to help military families. 

Although the study findings may be specific to families of National Guardsmen and women, Arndt said that the results agree with previous research that focused on risky behavior for children of deployed military men and women in Washington state, which unlike Iowa has a large active duty population. 

Does your coalition want to address substance abuse and quality of life issues with the veterans and their families in your community? The VetCorps project is being conducted by CADCA in partnership with the National Guard Bureau’s Prevention, Treatment and Outreach (PTO) Program with funding assistance from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). CADCA is recruiting AmeriCorps and VISTA members, and placing them in one of CADCA’s community coalitions located throughout the country to provide support to Veterans and Military Families (VMF) with a special emphasis on serving the needs of National Guard and Reserve VMF. 

Learn more about CADCA’s VetCorps project at http://www.cadca.org/VetCorps.

Two New Studies Conclude Marijuana Use Connected to College Failure

HealthDay reports that college students who use marijuana and other illegal substances, even occasionally, are more likely to leave school than students who don't dabble in drugs, new research finds. 

There's a strong link between marijuana use and "discontinuous enrollment," said study author Dr. Amelia Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The same goes for other drugs, she added. 

In a recent issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Arria and her colleagues reported that students with high levels of marijuana use (more than 17 days a month) were twice as likely as those with minimal use (less than a day a month) to have an enrollment gap while in college. But even students who used pot less often, in the range of three to 12 days a month, were more likely to experience enrollment gaps. 

Arria told HealthDay that researchers wanted to look at whether or not drug use interferes with goals students had set for themselves. Their results show that marijuana use is not the benign substance many people believe it is. 

"The perceived risk of marijuana is declining because people think it's more benign than it is, and its use is going up among college students. But we've known for a long time that marijuana affects cognition and memory,” Arria said. 

For their research, the authors used data from the College Life Study, ongoing research on health-related behaviors among college students. They tracked 1,133 participants (47 percent male) over four years. All of the students began their freshman year between the ages of 17 and 19, and they all attended the same university located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. 

During each school year, they participated in questionnaires and interviews, even if they had decided not to return to classes at the university (a financial incentive was offered). Their enrollment and graduation data were obtained from university records that the students consented to share. 

"Continuous enrollment" was defined as being enrolled at the university for at least one credit during each fall and spring semester for the first four years of the study, Arria said. By the study's end, 71 percent of the students had remained continuously enrolled over four years, and 29 percent had not. 

Aria said it's key to point out that their results were independent of other factors such as demographics, high school GPA, fraternity or sorority enrollment, personality type, risk-taking behaviors, and a student's use of tobacco and alcohol. "Marijuana use was still a predictor of discontinuous enrollment," Arria said. 

A second study, published in the journal Psychiatric Services and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, looked at drug use and mental health problems and the risk of leaving college prematurely. Arria and her colleagues report that students who experience symptoms of depression and seek treatment for depression during college might be at risk for an enrollment gap, too, especially if they use pot or other illicit drugs.

Study Finds Marijuana and Alcohol Use Common among 10th Grade Students

A recent survey found high rates of regular alcohol and illicit and prescription drug use in tenth graders, reports a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Researchers used data from the NEXT Generation Health study, which surveyed 2,524 10th grade students in 80 schools and 9 U.S. school districts in the spring of 2010.

Twenty-six percent of the surveyed teens reported using marijuana, making it the most common illicit drug used in the previous 12-month period. Additionally, 35 percent of the teens had used alcohol, 27 percent had engaged in binge drinking and 19 percent had smoked cigarettes.

The study found that teens using multiple substances reported more physical ailments and symptoms of depression, anxiety or hopelessness and having difficulty sleeping. In addition, these adolescents reported more high-risk behaviors.

Dr. Kevin Conway, the study’s lead author from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said the study had several important findings.

“First, the results show that there are multiple types or subgroups of adolescent substance users who differ in terms of use patterns, somatic complaints, and depressive symptoms. Second, one subgroup tended to abuse multiple different substances including marijuana, alcohol, and medications. Third, this same group also reported the highest levels of somatic complaints and depressive symptoms. Together, these findings implicate polysubstance use as a broad indicator of severity deserving research and clinical attention,” he explained.

Conway, NIDA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Services, and Prevention Research, said that the high-risk profile of the polysubstance users indicates a need for mental health and substance use screening and referral.

“This indication is one of the most important and actionable findings of this study,” he told CADCA.

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