General+Research

=__General Research__ =

====Prescription drug abuse among college students is a growing trend on most campuses. Students are using these drugs inappropriately to not only “get high”, but to help with concentration when cramming for papers or tests, to self-medicate for anxiety or depression, and even to enhance their stamina when playing sports. ====

**Assessing the Problem**
==== Before choosing a prevention strategy, you must start with assessment—the same as you would when addressing high-risk alcohol abuse or violence on campus. While national data are important and regional/state data are also relevant, campus data are the most important sources for piecing together the problem on your campus. The following options may help you gather data related to your campus community: ==== ====As with alcohol and other drug use, prescription drug abuse is shaped by the physical, social, economic, and legal environment. Educational approaches and awareness activities help students when part of a comprehensive prevention approach, but these environmental strategies show promise in the battle against prescription drug abuse among college students: ====
 * ====Student body-wide health assessment surveys (CORE, NCHA, or create your own) ====
 * ====Students: Employ student workers, conduct focus groups ====
 * ====Environmental scanning, including physical and online social networking environments ====
 * ====Campus and local police ====
 * ====Hospitals and campus health services ====
 * ====Residence hall staff ====
 * ====Other local institutions of higher education and high schools ====
 * ====Feeder schools ====
 * ====Enhancing Prevention Efforts ====

 **Strengthen campus policy, enforcement**

 * ====Drug-Free Schools and Campuses Act: update your written policy & inform faculty, staff, students of AOD policies, penalties ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Enforce & increase publicity of disciplinary actions associated w/ policy violations ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Inform parents of trends, prevention efforts: consider parental notification ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Increase detection efforts ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Focus on the normative environment**

 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Conduct social norms marketing campaigns…//if// misperceptions exist ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Add commitment to avoid prescription drug abuse to academic honor code ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Work with faculty, staff, RAs to avoid skewing norms & spreading misperceptions; increase faculty-student contact and mentoring ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**National and Regional Data Sources**

 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Core Institute provides results from [|**The Core Alcohol and Drug Survey**], which assesses the nature, scope, and consequences of alcohol and other drug use on college campuses. The most recent statistics are drawn from a sample of 33,379 undergraduate students from about 53 colleges in the United States. These colleges conducted Core Survey during 2005. All institutions used methods to insure a random and representative sample of their respective student bodies. Results include statistics on demographics, prevalence, heavy and frequent usage rates, and substance use-related consequences. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|Monitoring the Future] (MTF) is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of American secondary school students, college students, and young adults. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|The National Survey on Drug Use and Health] (NSDUH) provides annual data on drug use in the United States. The survey provides yearly national and state level estimates of alcohol, tobacco, illicit drug, and non-medical prescription drug use. Other health-related questions also appear from year to year, including questions about mental health. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The American College Health Association [|National College Health Assessment] (NCHA) is a nationally recognized research survey that can assist administrators in collecting precise data about students’ health habits, behaviors, and perceptions, including smoking habits, contraception use, mental health issues, relationship difficulties, sexual behaviors, exercise habits, preventive health practices, and perceptions of drug and alcohol use. ====

====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">A federal report on teen drug use released Monday shows some progress. But abuse of prescription drugs is up, and the growing acceptance of medical-marijuana use is making marijuana look safe. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">A national study widely considered to be an important indicator of youth drug abuse showed progress with some drugs but widespread problems with marijuana and prescription or over-the-counter drugs. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The study, compiled by the University of Michigan for the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse, found that 7 of the 10 drugs most abused by high school seniors are prescription or over-the-counter drugs acquired primarily from teens’ friends or relatives. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">“I am not surprised by this new study because not just teens, but society as a whole is looking for instant gratification … [and] teens are increasingly turning to prescription drugs because they want to feel things in this second,” says Clare Kavin, executive director of the Waismann Method, a drug treatment program. “They have been taught to take a pill to lose weight, to treat acne, to fall asleep, and to focus better in schools. Teens are under the impression that pills are the best way to treat any mental, physical, or social issues.” ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The study, released Monday, focuses on eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders. Within that group, use-rates for some substances have improved – notably hallucinogens and cocaine by 12th graders and methamphetamines among eighth graders. Cigarette use, too, continued to drop significantly. In 1997, 36.5 percent of 12th-graders said they'd smoked a cigarette during the past month. This year, 20.1 percent said they had. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">But use of inhalants by 10th-graders increased, and use of marijuana across all three grade-levels increased. The study attributed the rise, at least in part, to the growing acceptance of marijuana use for medicinal purposes. That trend has made the drug appear less dangerous to teens, the study said. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">This study “is a warning sign, and the continued erosion in youth attitudes and behavior toward substance abuse should give pause to all parents and policymakers,” said Gil Kerlikowske, director of the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington. “These latest data confirm that we must redouble our efforts to implement a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to preventing and treating drug use.” ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The new study can help healthcare professionals understand how drug-use patterns change over time and why.
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">“Drug use in the adolescent population is not new, but how they view drug use, combined with how they are gaining access to the drugs they choose to use” is new, says Elizabeth Dowdell, associate professor in the college of nursing at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. “Understanding that the choice of drug from the past may not be the drug of choice today is critical.” ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Such data is vital to shaping effective antidrug campaigns. The ads of the 1980s may have actually contributed to increasing marijuana use, says William Crano, a research professor at Claremont Graduate University in California. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">“Those 'this is your brain on drugs' commercials we remember from the '80s turned out to have the opposite effect and actually made more teens try pot,” says Dr. Crano. What is effective, he says, are the new “Parents: The Anti-Drug” commercials currently running on TV. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">“Turns out, it isn’t very effective to try and scare teens into thinking pot is bad. But when teens think mom and dad are paying attention, they are less likely to smoke marijuana,” says Crano. “That’s why, when the commercials are geared towards mom, the teen thinks mom might be onto their behavior.” ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Teens are abusing prescription drugs because they believe the myth that these drugs provide a medically safe high.

 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Nearly one in five teens (19% or 4.5 million) report abusing prescription medications that were not prescribed to them. (PATS, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Teens admit to abusing prescription medicine for reasons other than getting high, including to relieve pain or anxiety, to sleep better, to experiment, to help with concentration or to increase alertness. (Boyd, McCabe, Cranford and young, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">When teens abuse prescription drugs, they often characterize their use of the drugs as “responsible,” “controlled” or “safe,” with the perception that the drugs are safer than street drugs. (Friedman, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">More than one-third of teens say they feel some pressure to abuse prescription drugs, and nine percent say using prescription drugs to get high is an important part of fitting in with their friends. (Seventeen, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Four out of 10 teens agree that prescription medicines are much safer to use than illegal drugs, even if they are not prescribed by a doctor. (PATS, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">One-third of teens (31% or 7.3 million) believe there’s “nothing wrong” with using prescription medicines without a prescription once in a while. (PATS, 2006) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Nearly three out of 10 teens (29% or 6.8 million) believe prescription pain relievers—even if not prescribed by a doctor—are not addictive. (PATS, 2006) ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Undergraduates should be tested for so-called ‘smart drugs’ before they take university exams, a behavioural expert urged yesterday.
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Students are using substances such as Ritalin and Modafinil that help increase alertness, which has ‘enormous implications for universities’, it was claimed. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> ‘Some students say they feel it is cheating, and it puts pressure on them to feel they have to use these drugs when they don’t really want to,’ said Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University. ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> ‘This is something that universities really have to discuss. They should have some strategy, some kind of active policy.’
====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The smart drugs, which are usually prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and Alzheimer’s disease, boost acetylcholine in the brain – which increases alertness. ==== ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The long-term effects on healthy people using these drugs has not yet been documented but some scientists believe they could eventually become an accepted part of society in a move towards ‘cosmetic neurology’. ====

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 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">NOTE: “off label use” = it does not have the approval of either the drug’s manufacturer or the Food and Drug Administration. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Adderall and Ritalin, another stimulant, have been adopted as cognitive enhancers: drugs that high-functioning, overcommitted people take to become higher-functioning and more overcommitted. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">In 2005, a team led by Sean Esteban McCabe, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Substance Abuse Research Center, reported that in the previous year 4.1 per cent of American undergraduates had taken prescription stimulants for off-label use; at one school, the figure was twenty-five per cent. Other researchers have found even higher rates: a 2002 study at a small college found that more than thirty-five per cent of the students had used prescription stimulants nonmedically in the previous year. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Drugs such as Adderall can cause nervousness, headaches, sleeplessness, and decreased appetite, among other side effects. An F.D.A. warning on Adderall’s label notes that “amphetamines have a high potential for abuse” and can lead to dependence. (The label also mentions that adults using Adderall have reported serious cardiac problems, though the role of the drug in those cases is unknown.) ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">According to McCabe’s research team, white male undergraduates at highly competitive schools—especially in the Northeast—are the most frequent collegiate users of neuroenhancers. Users are also more likely to belong to a fraternity or a sorority, and to have a G.P.A. of 3.0 or lower. They are ten times as likely to report that they have smoked marijuana in the past year, and twenty times as likely to say that they have used cocaine. In other words, they are decent students at schools where, to be a great student, you have to give up a lot more partying than they’re willing to give up. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Online poll asking whether readers attempted to sharpen “their focus, concentration, or memory” by taking drugs such as Ritalin and Provigil—a newer kind of stimulant, known generically as modafinil, which was developed to treat narcolepsy. One out of five respondents said that they did. A majority of the fourteen hundred readers who responded said that healthy adults should be permitted to take brain boosters for nonmedical reasons, and sixty-nine per cent said that mild side effects were an acceptable risk. Though a majority said that such drugs should not be made available to children who had no diagnosed medical condition, a third admitted that they would feel pressure to give “smart drugs” to their kids if they learned that other parents were doing so. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">ampakines, which target a type of glutamate receptor in the brain; it is hoped that they may stem the memory loss associated with diseases like Alzheimer’s. But ampakines may also give healthy people a palpable cognitive boost. A 2007 study of sixteen healthy elderly volunteers found that five hundred milligrams of one particular ampakine “unequivocally” improved short-term memory, though it appeared to detract from episodic memory—the recall of past events. ====

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 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The drugs are actually prescription medications like Ritalin and Adderall -- used to help people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder calm down and concentrate. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">They're "performance enhancing drugs, almost like academic steroids," said Dr. Eric Heiligenstein, head of psychiatry for the University of Wisconsin health services. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Heiligenstein says study drugs basically work like speed, with a powerful effect on the central nervous system. Adderall is essentially an amphetamine and Ritalin is an amphetamine-like substance. Even a normal dose can last 24 hours. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The government regulates Ritalin and Adderall as tightly as Oxycontin and morphine, because of the potential adverse effects on the body and the mind. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"The short-term physical impact, there are people who can have serious cardiac risks," said Heiligenstein. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">He said some students are even starting to experience dependence and addiction. ====

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 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Adderall is a fast-acting mixture of amphetamines. Amphetamines act on the brain by mimicking the neurotransmitter dopamine, which increases alertness and concentration. Studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health in the late 1970s found that low-dose stimulants increase concentration and alertness in everyone, not just people with attention disorders. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Side effects of Adderall can include loss of appetite, insomnia and weight loss. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Overall, prescriptions for stimulants have risen from 1.6 million in 2000 to 2.6 million a month in 2004. ====

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 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">They're commonly called "smart drugs" or "study drugs." Scientists call them "cognitive enhancers." ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">They say the main source for the drugs are students who have prescriptions to treat their attention-deficit disorder. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Although Adderall and Ritalin might sound like wonder drugs that can help students study for hours, the drugs are amphetamine-based. That means they can be habit-forming ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Farah describes a college survey in which as many as 25 percent of students on some college campuses have used these study drugs in the past year. ====
 * ====<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">"These are serious drugs with serious side effects," such as severe sleep deprivation and rare heart problems, she says. But most importantly, she says, the drugs can be addictive. ====