Support 21 Coalition

“GHSA strongly supports the 21 Minimum Drinking Age Law. Both research and the hands-on experience of state highway safety agencies indicate that this law has saved countless lives. Underage drinking remains a serious problem that needs to be addressed, but lowering the drinking age would be a gigantic step backward for highway safety.”

--Christopher J. Murphy, Chairman, Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) and Director of the California Office of Traffic Safety

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Activist: Drinking age should be lowered
By Martin B. Cassidy

Published October 5 2007

GREENWICH - A former college president spoke last night about his effort to lower the drinking age to 18, which he said would curb binge drinking and alcohol-related deaths among young adults.

John McCardell Jr., president of Middlebury College from 1990 to 2004, said he believes that when the drinking age was raised to 21 in 1984, it gave rise to young adults abusing alcohol in social settings where they had no supervision.
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Families short-changed by alcohol proposals
9 October 2007,
Press Release: Alcohol Healthwatch

Tuesday 9 October 2007

Communities and families short-changed by alcohol proposals

It has been reported in the media recently that Justice Minister Mark Burton is seeking feedback from allied parties on a range of proposals to address youth drinking following a review into the sale and supply to minors. Alcohol Healthwatch believes that the proposals, as reported, will have little impact nor will they meet community expectations.

Alcohol Healthwatch Director Rebecca Williams says that community concerns regarding alcohol have been well articulated in recent times, in some instances by families who have experienced tragic losses as a result of our binge friendly environment. She believes there is a growing public understanding and support for more effective measures to reduce the burden of harm associated with alcohol.

Williams says there is strong public support for returning the legal purchase age to 20 years and the community also wants greater influence over local licensing decisions, especially those concerning the number and location of licensed premises and their opening hours.
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Alcoholism and alcohol drinking habits predicted from alcohol dehydrogenase genes

The Pharmacogenomics Journal advance online publication 9 October 2007;

Alcohol drinking habits and alcoholism are partly genetically determined.

Alcohol is degraded primarily by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) wherein genetic variation that affects the rate of alcohol degradation is found in ADH1B and ADH1C. It is biologically plausible that these variations may be associated with alcohol drinking habits and alcoholism.

By genotyping 9080 white men and women from the general population, we found that men and women with ADH1B slow vs fast alcohol degradation drank more alcohol and had a higher risk of everyday drinking, heavy drinking, excessive drinking and of alcoholism.

For example, the weekly alcohol intake was 9.8 drinks (95|[percnt]| confidence interval (CI): 9.1|[ndash]|11) among men with the ADH1B|[middot]|1|[sol]|1 genotype compared to 7.5 drinks (95|[percnt]| CI: 6.4|[ndash]|8.7) among men with the ADH1B|[middot]|1|[sol]|2 genotype, and the odds ratio (OR) for heavy drinking was 3.1 (95|[percnt]| CI: 1.7|[ndash]|5.7) among men with the ADH1B|[middot]|1|[sol]|1 genotype compared to men with the ADH1B|[middot]|1|[sol]|2 genotype.

Furthermore, individuals with ADH1C slow vs fast alcohol degradation had a higher risk of heavy and excessive drinking. For example, the OR for heavy drinking was 1.4 (95|[percnt]| CI: 1.1|[ndash]|1.8) among men with the ADH1C|[middot]|1|[sol]|2 genotype and 1.4 (95|[percnt]| CI: 1.0|[ndash]|1.9) among men with the ADH1B|[middot]|2|[sol]|2 genotype, compared with men with the ADH1C|[middot]|1|[sol]|1 genotype.

Results for ADH1B and ADH1C genotypes among men and women were similar.

Finally, because slow ADH1B alcohol degradation is found in more than 90|[percnt]| of the white population compared to less than 10|[percnt]| of East Asians, the population attributable risk of heavy drinking and alcoholism by ADH1B|[middot]|1|[sol]|1 genotype was 67 and 62|[percnt]| among the white population compared with 9 and 24|[percnt]| among the East Asian population.

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Reprint Request E-Mail: jst@niph.dk

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Venezuela's Chavez on Moral Crusade

October 9, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez is on a moral crusade in Venezuela, preaching against vices from alcohol to cholesterol, vowing to curb whisky imports and ordering beer trucks off the street.

His government announced increased taxes on alcohol and tobacco on Monday, and Chavez also plans steep new taxes on luxury items such as fancy cars and artwork.
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Kids 'taught to drink at WA community

October 8, 2007

Children under 10 are taught to drink alcohol at an indigenous community of unparalleled squalor in Western Australia, an inquest was told.

Tommy May, in his seventies, told the inquest he lives in an asbestos and corrugated iron dwelling with no beds at the Mindi Rardi community outside Fitzroy Crossing where alcoholism is rife.

As WA Coroner Alastair Hope began examining 11 cannabis and alcohol-related deaths in Fitzroy Crossing, Mr May told of children under ten drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis in his community.
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PRESS RELEASE - FORTY YEARS OF BREATH TESTING, BUT ACTION STILL NEEDED

October 5, 2007

Ahead of the 40th anniversary of breathalyser testing on Tuesday (October 9), the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said it was now time to step up the campaign against drink driving to stop any more needless deaths.

Thousands of deaths and serious injuries have been avoided in Britain since October 9, 1967, when the current drink-drive limit (80mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood) became a legal requirement and roadside testing was introduced. At the time, it was said that drinking before driving led to about 13,000 fatal and serious casualties each year. By 1987, the figure for people killed or seriously injured in accidents involving illegal alcohol levels had dropped to 6,800 and by last year it had fallen to 2,500.

Despite this tremendous success, there is still a need for a cut in the drink-drive limit because the consistent fall in drink-drive fatalities ceased at the end of the 1990s.
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The impact of supply reduction through alcohol management plans on serious injury in remote indigenous communities in remote Australia: A ten-year analysis using data from the royal flying doctor service
Alcohol and Alcoholism Advance Access published online on October 8, 2007



To assess the impact of supply reduction through Alcohol Management Plans (AMP) on the rate of serious injuries in four indigenous communities in remote Australia.

This impact evaluation provides evidence that AMP was effective in reducing serious injury in the assessed indigenous communities.

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Reprint request E-Mail: Stephen.margolis@jcu.edu.au

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Binge drinking soars among under-14s


By Sue Carter

08/10/2007

One in seven people taken to hospital for drinking too much in the past year was under 14 years old, according to new figures.

A total of 2,239 under-14s were given treatment in A&E suffering from the effects of alcohol over the past 12 months, a study found - one in seven of the total under 59 admitted.

The revelations about the scale of underage drinking led to renewed calls for a clampdown on alcohol advertising seemingly targeted at children.
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Changing Network Support for Drinking: Initial Findings From the Network Support Project

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Volume 75, Issue 4, August 2007, Pages 542-555

The aim of this study was to determine whether a socially focused treatment can effect change in the patient's social network from one that reinforces drinking to one that reinforces sobriety.

Alcohol dependent men and women (N = 210) recruited from the community were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 outpatient treatment conditions: network support (NS), network support + contingency management (NS + CM), or case management (CaseM; a control condition).

Analysis of drinking rates for 186 participants at 15 months indicated a significant interaction effect of Treatment x Time, with both NS conditions yielding better outcomes than the CaseM condition. Analyses of social network variables at posttreatment indicated that the NS conditions did not reduce social support for drinking relative to the CaseM condition but did increase behavioral and attitudinal support for abstinence as well as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) involvement. Both the NS variables and AA involvement variables were significantly correlated with drinking outcomes.

These findings indicate that drinkers' social networks can be changed by a treatment that is specifically designed to do so, and that these changes contribute to improved drinking outcomes.

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Request Reprint E-Mail: Litt@nso.uchc.edu

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Column - Alcohol & Drug Abuse: Revisiting Employee Assistance Programs and Substance Use Problems in the Workplace: Key Issues and a Research Agenda
Psychiatr Serv 58:1262-1264, October 2007




This column describes employee assistance program EAPs) and identifies key issues for contemporary EAPs.

These programs began as occupational alcohol programs and have evolved into more comprehensive resources.

To better understand contemporary EAPs, the authors suggest a research agenda that includes descriptive studies to provide an up-to-date picture of services; investigations of how contemporary EAPs address substance use problems, including management consultation for early identification; further study of EAPs' effects on outcomes, such as productivity and work group outcomes; examination of the relationship between EAPs and other workplace resources; further examination of influences on EAP utilization; and development and testing of EAP performance measures.

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Request reprint E-Mail: merrick@brandeis.edu
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Predictors of injurious assault committed during or after drinking alcohol: a case-control study of young offenders
Aggressive Behavior Early View 5 October 2007


Studies of causal links between alcohol and aggression are often handicapped by threats to internal and external validity. Case-control methods employ an event-level analysis that can reduce some of these validity threats by the use of within-subject controls.

This study used a case-control approach, asking 39 male inmates in a Young Offenders' Institution to compare drinking behaviour before incidents where they reported commission of an injurious assault and a matched incident where they did not.

After controlling contextual differences, participants reported personally drinking more heavily and heavier drinking within their group, but not being more impaired when an assault was committed. The assault incidents were more likely to involve spontaneous, rather than planned, drinking and a higher proportion of males in the group. They were less likely to involve drinking in a pub.

Our confirmation of previous findings using a case-control methodology strengthens those findings. Limitations of this methodology are also discussed.

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Reprint Request E-Mail: s.brown2@derby.ac.uk
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Effects Of Moderate Sleep Deprivation and Low-Dose Alcohol On Driving Simulator Performance and Perception In Young Men
Journal SLEEP Volume 30/ Issue 10 - October 1, 2007; pp 1327-1333

To determine the combined effects of sleep restriction and low-dose alcohol on driving simulator performance, EEG, and subjective levels of sleepiness and performance in the mid-afternoon. These data indicate that combining low-dose alcohol with moderate sleep restriction results in significant decrements to subjective alertness and performance as well as to some driving performance and EEG parameters. This highlights the potential risks of driving after consumption of low and legal doses of alcohol when also sleep restricted.

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Request Reprint E-Mail: :Stuart.Baulk@unisa.edu.au

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The Interactive Effects of Extended Wakefulness and Low-dose Alcohol on Simulated Driving and Vigilance
Journal SLEEP Volume 30/ Issue 10 - October 1, 2007; pp 1334-1340


Sleep deprivation and alcohol both impair driving performance. This study assessed the interactive effect of low-dose alcohol and extended wakefulness.

The combination of legal low-dose alcohol and extended wakefulness results in impairment worse than that at an alcohol level known to increase accident risk. Avoiding alcohol when driving after extended wakefulness may reduce accident risk.

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Request Reprint E-Mail: mark.howard@austin.org.au

News Release - Early school success protects against teen and young adult drug use

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Adolescents who do well in school are less likely to smoke, drink or do drugs. But which comes first: drug use or school failure?

Researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) provide an answer in a new book. Patterns of educational success or failure are well established for most adolescents by the time they reach the end of eighth grade, while drug use has only begun to emerge by that time.

When more opportunities for substance use do emerge, students already doing well in school are less likely to engage in such behaviors, whereas those doing poorly are more likely to do so, the researchers say.
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Substance Use Treatment among Women of Childrearing Age

Highlights:

• Combined data from SAMHSA's National Surveys on Drug Use & Health conducted from 2004 to 2006 indicate that an annual average of 6.3 million women (9.4%) aged 18 to 49 needed treatment for a substance use problem.

• Of the women aged 18 to 49 who met criteria for needing substance use treatment in the past year, 84.2% neither received it nor perceived the need for substance use treatment. Only 5.5% of women in this age group had a perceived unmet treatment need (i.e., did not receive substance use treatment even though they thought they needed it).

• The reasons for not receiving substance use treatment among the women with an unmet treatment need were as follows: 36.1% were not ready to stop using alcohol or illicit drugs, 34.4% could not cover their treatment costs because of no or inadequate health insurance coverage, and 28.9% did not seek substance use treatment because of social stigma.

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ADH7 Variation Modulates Extraversion and Conscientiousness in Substance-Dependent Subjects.
Am J Med Genet Part B. Early View Online 4 October 2007



Human personality traits have been closely linked to substance dependence (SD), and are partially genetically determined. Recently, associations between alcohol dehydrogenase 7 (ADH7) and SD have been reported, which led us to investigate the relationship between ADH7 variation and personality traits.

We assessed dimensions of the five-factor model of personality and genotyped 4 ADH7 markers and 38 unlinked ancestry-informative markers in 244 subjects with SD [178 European-Americans (EAs) and 66 African-Americans (AAs)] and 293 healthy subjects (253 EAs and 40 AAs).

The present study demonstrated that the ADH7 variation may contribute to the genetic component of variation in personality traits, with the risk for SD and personality traits being partially shared.

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Reprint Request E-Mail: Xingguang.Luo@yale.edu
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Grant to aid drug, alcohol patients

UNION-TRIBUNE

October 5, 2007

San Diego County has received a $7.7 million grant to offer drug and alcohol screenings and treatment referrals to consenting patients at local hospitals.

The money, to be spent over three years, comes from two state agencies: the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

The idea is that patients seeking emergency care for health problems caused or worsened by alcohol or drug use might be more willing to join a treatment program than those at a police station, said Jennifer Schaffer, director of the county's Behavioral Health Services department.
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Changing Systems: Outcomes from the RWJF Reclaiming Futures Initiative on Juvenile Justice and Substance Abuse(Research Report)
Author(s): Jeffrey A. Butts, John Roman



Reclaiming Futures (RF) is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that seeks to improve outcomes for drug-involved youth in the juvenile justice system. The first phase of Reclaiming Futures (2002–07) was a ten-site demonstration effort that relied on organizational change and system reform to improve substance abuse interventions for youthful offenders.

As part of a national evaluation of Reclaiming Futures, the Urban Institute and Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago conducted biannual surveys in each community participating in the initiative. The surveys measured the quality of juvenile justice and substance abuse treatment systems as reported by expert informants in each community.

The pattern of their responses over six survey administrations (December 2003 to June 2006) suggests that RF is a promising strategy for improving substance abuse interventions for youth. Positive and significant changes were reported in all ten RF communities. In several communities, most quality indicators measured by the evaluation improved significantly during the course of the RF initiative.

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Press Release - CASA* RECEIVES $3 MILLION DOLLAR NIDA GRANT TO LAUNCH NEW TREATMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH NEW YORK STATE SUBSTANCE ABUSE OFFICE

NEW YORK, NY,
October 4, 2007 –

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University and the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) have joined forces to create CASACCARE - Chronic Care Approaches to Recovery, a new approach to better help individuals struggling with the chronic disease of drug and alcohol abuse and addiction and to save taxpayers money.
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