Smoking in the Movies

“The number of U.S. movies showing people smoking has declined since 2005, but cigarettes still feature in far too many films and could be influencing young people to take up the habit, according to a report released on Thursday” by the CDC. For more information, click here.

Inside the Teen Brain

NPR has a fantastic article discussing the formation of the teen brain and why it is that some teens do things that do not make a lot of sense to those of us who are older.  It appears that their brain is still developing!  Click here for the story!

More Teens Using Alcohol, Ecstasy, and Marijuana

After years of steady decline, there is now an upsurge in drug abuse among teens, according to a new national study released by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and the MetLife Foundation. To read more, click here.

More Women Driving Drunk

A new study reports that the number of young women driving drunk and being involved in fatal car crashes in on the rise. For more information, click here.

Researcher Decries Parental Permissiveness on Drinking

A Penn State researcher says that parents who let teens drink alcohol may be setting their kids up for binge drinking in college, but the study by Caitlin Abar of the school’s Prevention Research and Methodology Center makes no distinction between parents who simply let kids drink some wine during meals and those whose permissiveness extends to drinking outside the home.

Science Daily reported June 11 that Abar surveyed 300 college freshmen and correlated their alcohol use to the drinking rules set down by their parents. Abar found that students whose parents never allowed them to drink were less likely to report heavy drinking in college.

On the other hand, “the greater number of drinks that a parent had set as a limit for the teens, the more often they drank and got drunk in college,” said Abar.

Abar said the research argues in favor of “zero tolerance” for teen drinking and against the theory that parental restrictions on drinking casts alcohol as attractive “forbidden fruit” and leads to greater temptation to drink in college. Whether or not parents themselves drank had little impact on college binge drinking, Abar added.

Thirty-one states allow parents to legally serve alcohol to children under age 21.
The research was presented at a meeting of the Society for Prevention Research.

For the full article, click here.

Next Page »