Temporal sequence of incident cigarette, coffee, and alcohol use among AA participants

Secondary Effects of an Alcohol Prevention Program Targeting Students and/or Parents

The secondary effects of an alcohol prevention program (PAS) on onset of weekly smoking and monthly cannabis use are examined among >3000 Dutch early adolescents (M age=12.64) randomized over four conditions: 1) parent intervention (PI), 2) student intervention (SI), 3) combined intervention (CI) and 4) control condition (CC). Rules about alcohol, alcohol use, and adolescents' self-control were investigated as possible mediators. PI had a marginal aversive effect, slightly increasing the risk of beginning to smoke at T1, and increased the likelihood of beginning to use cannabis use at T1 and T2. SI delayed the onset of monthly cannabis use at T3. CI increased the risk to use cannabis at T3. No mediational processes were found. In conclusion, though this study show mixed results, negative side effects of the PI were found, particularly at earlier ages. Moreover, these results indicate the need for multi-target interventions.

Prioritizing Alcohol Prevention: Establishing Alcohol as the Gateway Drug and Linking Age of First Drink With Illicit Drug Use

BACKGROUND

Given ever-reducing budgets of community and school substance use prevention programs, there is a call for identifying the first substance in the sequence leading to polydrug use.

METHODS

Examining data from a nationally representative sample of 2835 United States 12th graders, we sought to determine (1) the first substance adolescents use; (2) order in which adolescents progress through alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use; and (3) impact of age of initial substance use on lifetime and frequency of illicit substance use.

RESULTS

Alcohol is the most commonly used substance, and the majority of polysubstance using respondents consumed alcohol prior to tobacco or marijuana initiation. Respondents initiating alcohol use in sixth grade reported significantly greater lifetime illicit substance use (M = 1.9, standard deviation [SD] = 1.7, p < .001) and more frequent illicit substance use (M = 6.0, SD = 6.5, p < .001) than those initiating alcohol use in ninth grade or later. Overall, effect sizes for these differences were large (eta squared = 0.30 and 0.28, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Findings underscore the importance of screening for substance use, even among youth enrolled in elementary/middle school. In addition, school prevention programs should begin in elementary school (third grade) and target alcohol use.

Growth trajectories of alcohol information processing and associations with escalation of drinking in early adolescence

This longitudinal study provided a comprehensive examination of age-related changes in alcohol outcome expectancies, subjective evaluation of alcohol outcomes, and automatic alcohol associations in early adolescence. A community sample (52% female, 75% White/non-Hispanic) was assessed annually for 3 years (mean age at the first assessment = 11.6 years). Results from growth modeling suggested that perceived likelihood of positive outcomes increased and that subjective evaluations of these outcomes were more positive with age. Perceived likelihood of negative outcomes declined with age. Automatic alcohol associations were assessed with an Implicit Association Task (IAT), and were predominantly negative, but these negative associations weakened with age. High initial levels of perceived likelihood of positive outcomes at age 11 were associated with escalation of drinking. Perceived likelihood of negative outcomes was associated with low risk for drinking at age 11, but not with changes in drinking. Increases in positive evaluations of positive outcomes were associated with increases in alcohol use. Overall, findings suggest that at age 11, youth maintain largely negative attitudes and perceptions about alcohol, but with the transition into adolescence, there is a shift toward a more neutral or ambivalent view of alcohol. Some features of this shift are associated with escalation of drinking. Our findings point to the importance of delineating multiple aspects of alcohol information processing for extending cognitive models of alcohol use to the early stages of drinking.

Differential effects of baseline drinking status: effects of an alcohol prevention program targeting students and/or parents (PAS) among weekly drinking students

The effects of an intervention designed to prevent onset of weekly drinking in non drinking students (PAS) were investigated in the group of students that was already drinking at baseline. A cluster randomized trial was used including 3,490 Dutch early adolescents (M age = 12.66, SD = 0.49) randomized over four conditions; 1) parent intervention, 2) student intervention, 3) combined intervention and 4) control group. Outcome measures were amount and growth of weekly alcohol drinking measured 10, 22 and 34 months after baseline. The combined intervention significantly curbed the growth of drinking among both non-drinkers (the target group of the intervention) and drinkers at baseline. Overall, less strong increases of drinking over time are found among non-drinkers compared to drinkers at baseline. Thus, the combined PAS intervention is also effective in curbing adolescents' drinking behaviour in those who already were drinking at baseline. Broad implementation of the combined parent-student intervention is recommended.