At Risk Youth

A community group in Redlands, Calif., is shifting its approach to underage drinking. Rather than informing young people about the dangers of drinking, the group is educating adults on the consequences of providing young people with alcohol.

“The RPC [Redlands Prevention Coalition] is working to create a ’social host’ ordinance in Redlands,” the Redlands Daily Facts newspaper reported. “The law could empower police to cite hosts of underage drinking parties with civil or criminal violations. Police could also levy fines for the cost of law enforcement services needed to enforce the ordinance against hosts who do not comply with the law.”

Other cities in the area have adopted similar laws and seen them work. The RPC is currently drafting legislation that it hopes to put in front of lawmakers soon.

As computer-based games continue to soar in popularity, researchers have discovered that young gamers may be at risk for developing compulsion behaviors.

About 10 percent of all children are addicted to video or online games, according to a new study from the National Institute on Media and Family.

Video game addiction is similar to addiction to drugs, alcohol, and gambling in that it affects the pleasure centers of the brain in similar ways.

Warning signs of addictions to video games include the following:

• Lying, extreme secretiveness, or defensiveness about one’s gaming
• Restlessness or irritability — especially when unable to play
• Passing up opportunities to eat and sleep in order to keep playing
• Being unable to keep track of time spent in gaming
• Lowered academic performance or skipping school
• Defiance in the face of requests (or orders) to stop playing
• Isolation from family and friends, and playing games instead of doing homework

Professor Douglas Gentile at Iowa State University led the research, which was published in the journal Psychological Science.

A recent California study has highlighted the dangers that binge drinking poses to adolescents and teenagers.

According to the study, which was published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, adolescents who binge drink may suffer brain damage as a result.

• Binge drinking for males is defined as having five drinks or more in a row in one sitting. For most females, it can be four drinks or more in a row in a sitting.
• About 25 percent of all high school seniors binge drink at least twice a month.
• Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that binge drinking might damage the brain’s white matter, which is critical for the relay of information.

“Because the brain is still developing during adolescence, there has been concern that it may be more vulnerable to high doses of alcohol,” said Dr. Susan Tapert. “This study shows that teenagers with histories of binge drinking episodes have lower coherence of white matter fibers in a variety of brain regions.”

Terri Fifer spent a painful week wondering where her 13-year-old son had gone. After a rough year both at school and at home, he just disappeared.

In a July 15 article in the Ahwatukee Foothills News, writer Doug Murphy reported that although Fifer’s experience had a happy ending (her son was found unharmed), it forced her to acknowledge how much she didn’t know about her own child:

“You don’t know until your kid goes missing. I learned the hard way what my kid’s secret life was,” Fifer said last week after her son was found, thanks to tips from friends.

But in the seven days he was on his own in Ahwatukee Foothills, she learned that she really didn’t know who his friends were, who their parents were, that many of the middle school students he hung with would either ignore her frantic calls asking for help in finding him, or outright lied about where her son was.

And there is more she has yet to learn because she can’t log onto his MySpace page, and thanks to the electronic social world, it is often in the electronic world that children open up to their peers and discuss what they are doing.

Modern technology, especially the Internet and text messaging, make secret lives easier — and should remind parents that they need to be especially vigilant regarding their child’s comings and goings (both online and in the “real world”).

Changes in friends, behavior or school performance could be signs that your child is hiding something. Maintain an active positive presence in your child’s life, and don’t be afraid to exert your right as a parent to know where he’s going, what he’s doing, and who he’s associating with.

As it has done every year since 1998, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is calling for greater awareness of the scourge of drug abuse today, June 26, as it observes the annual International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The effort is designed to focus specific attention on the continuing devastation of adolescent and ten substance abuse:

The use of illicit drugs harms individuals, families and society at large. Drugs control the body and mind of individual consumers, the drug crop and drug cartels control farmers, trafficking and crime control communities.

Teenagers and young adults are particularly vulnerable to using illicit drugs. The prevalence of drug use among young people is more than twice as high as that among the general population. At this age, peer pressure to experiment with illicit drugs can be strong and self-esteem is often low.

Also, those who take drugs tend to be either misinformed or insufficiently aware of the health risks involved. (Source: UNODC website)

“The rising use of addictive drugs has become one of the biggest social problems threatening various countries,” Dr Jitendra Nagpal wrote in a June 26 article on the UNDOC observance that appeared on the DoctorNDTV website.

“Adolescent drug use is an important social issue as its development and consequences impact directly on academic achievement, high school dropout rate, early sexual initiation, and troubled interpersonal relationships, among other consequences,” Dr. Nagpal wrote.