State and local regulations--laws, ordinances, policies--form the framework of any effort to reduce underage drinking. The right regulations, well crafted, can minimize the opportunities for young people to use alcohol and maximize opportunities for effective and efficient enforcement. The absence of an important regulation, or loopholes in the…

Currently, four out of five children in Russia's social rehabilitation institutions are "social" orphans, whose parents are still alive. Many of these children are losing their ability to learn in school, and the use of alcohol and narcotics, and early onset of sexual activity, are damaging their future life. These children are involved…

Americans have been wrestling with college drinking for so long that they've forgotten there was a time when they didn't. Prior to World War II there were a number of "crises" on American campuses--loutish behavior at football games, the introduction of the research-heavy "German Method," the corruption of coeds--but excessive college drinking was…

Historically, alcohol has been used for different purposes including as a part of religious observances, as a food, at times as a medicine and its well-known use as a beverage. Until relatively recently these purposes have not changed and have at times been at odds with one another, resulting in collisions among policies and practices in science,…

Objectives: By participating in this Stop the Tears teaching strategy, students will be able to: (1) analyze how alcohol and drug abuse could affect their lives as well as the lives of their friends and family and, (2) create a media message, such as a poster, pamphlet, poem, or song, in which alcohol and drug prevention is advocated specific to…

This paper outlines early findings from the Tasmanian-based Social Norms Analysis Project (SNAP). The Social Norms model is presented as a theoretically informed, evidence-based model for reducing alcohol-related harm in youthful populations by utilising the complex and often positive contributions peer groups make to adolescent health and…

Discursive psychology was used as a means of increasing our understanding of the way young people may talk about volume of consumption in relation to their drinking behaviour. Analysis of the audio recording and transcript of a pilot focus group discussion with four young people revealed that participants employed varying constructions of volume…

This occasional paper serves as a supplement to one of four annual monographs from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, written by the study's investigators and published by the study's sponsor, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The full 2009 survey results are reported in "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use,…

According to this author, the single greatest threat to the public trust in higher education is alcohol. Specifically, it is high-risk drinking among college students and the lack of engagement by those who can help solve the problem. He contends that, for too many students, college is no longer about preparing for leadership roles and productive…

War and social transition in Croatia have increased unemployment and rates of substance abuse. A decrease in prevention programs places adolescents at an increased risk. Data collected from the 2002 Split Youth Behavior Risk Survey (YRBS) showed that adolescents are at risk for alcohol use and related problems. Thus, there is a need to strengthen…

Alcohol abuse in older adulthood is a rapidly growing but often hidden problem. The authors provide an overview of the issues related to older adult alcohol abuse through a discussion of physiological, psychological, and social risk factors; an examination of appropriate assessment procedures; and an overview of factors related to treatment.

Media advocacy is an environmental strategy that can be used to support alcohol and other drug prevention and policy development efforts. It helps shift the focus from understanding public health issues as individual problems to understanding them as social conditions that require collective behavior changes. Successful media advocacy uses the…

This report presents the results of a survey on drug and alcohol use among students in elementary and secondary schools. Schools in 15 counties along the Texas-Mexico border were oversampled so that substance use among students could be looked at in detail. A total of 63,292 students (grades 7-12) and 43,915 students (grades 4-6) were sampled.…