JJIE.org Covers Youth + Addiction

Republican legislators want to double taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products, which could burn a hole in smokers’ wallets.

The current tax for cigarettes is $1.23 a pack. However, the proposed increase would more than double that to $2.52 per pack.

According to the American Cancer Society, youth smoking rates drop by 6.5 percent for every 10 percent increase in the price of a pack of cigarettes.

The adviser, Carolyn Newman, introduced the student organizers to the crowd in a brief speech.

She told the crowd that families struck by drug addiction share three common traits.

“Don’t talk, don’t feel, don’t trust,” Newman said. “But we’re here to create conversation among one another, to feel, to trust and to talk.”

Research paints a grim picture for marijuana users who start at a young age:

• Teens using marijuana before age 18 are two to four times more likely to develop psychosis as young adults compared to those who do not.
• The teen brain is much more vulnerable to addiction. One in 6 kids who try marijuana before age 18 will either abuse it or become addicted to it compared with 1 in 25 adults.
• Studies show that heavy doses of THC, the key chemical in marijuana, during adolescence change the way the brain develops. In particular, marijuana’s harmful effects strike the hippocampus, which is critical for learning and memory.

“We know that adolescents who start using marijuana between the ages of 14 and 22 – and stop by 22 – have many more cognitive deficits at age 27 compared to non-using peers,” said Dr. Paula Riggs, director of the Division of Substance Dependence in the psychiatry department at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Young teens who watch a lot of movies featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start drinking compared to peers who watch relatively few such films, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open.

And these teens are significantly more likely to progress to binge drinking, the study shows.

This week on ABC 5, we’ve been bringing you the story of the Juvenile Drug Court in Great Falls, a program designed to help teens turn their lives around.

Tonight we bring you the conclusion of 16 year old Chris Casson’s journey through addiction to recovery.

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Through rehab and the Juvenile Drug Court program, Chris has now been sober for 8 months. “A year ago his biggest ambition was to drop out of school and become a thug. Now he actually goes to school every day and he has an outlook for the future,” Tina says.

New findings by a Yale team of scientists may help explain why the risk of drug abuse and addiction increase significantly when cocaine use begins in adolescence.

When a teen brain is first exposed to cocaine, it launches a defensive response designed to minimize the drug’s effects. As reported in Science Daily, in two recent studies, Yale and other scientists have identified key genes that regulate this response and demonstrate that interfering with this reaction dramatically increases a mouse’s sensitivity to cocaine.

Study results were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Continuing the state’s efforts to address the growing problem of prescription drug addiction, Orman Hall Director of the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) announced in a recent press release the launch of Don’t Get Me Started, a statewide public service campaign that speaks to young adults and their friends and family, in partnership with the Ohio Association of County Behavioral Health Authorities (OACBHA).

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In addition to a dedicated web site (www.dontgetmestartedohio.org), highlighting Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Boards in each county and a link to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) for treatment options across the state, the campaign will also utilize a dedicated Facebook Page that will provide useful information on the state’s opiate abuse epidemic (including localized treatment and support resources) and serves as a sounding board for those touched by opiate abuse to engage with the campaign and share their stories with others.

Mayo Clinic researchers estimate the hospitalization costs for underage drinking in the U.S. is about $755 million each year.

Researchers found about 6 percent of all hospitalizations for young people ages 15 to 20 were related to alcohol problems. Of 700,000 hospitalizations, 40,0000 were for alcohol-related problems.