NEW RESEARCH EXHIBITS DANGER DRUGS, ALCOHOL POSE TO TEENAGERS' BRAINS

ST. LOUIS - Teenagers who drink, smoke and use drugs can derail their
brain development and set themselves up for lifelong addiction.

And parents who strictly monitor their teens' behavior are one of the
most influential forces preventing kids from using drugs and alcohol.

Now that might not sound like news to you.

But truth is, until recently most of what science has known about
addiction in teenagers has been extrapolated from research in adults.
Now, new brain-imaging studies have shown that the teenage brain is a
rapidly changing organ and doesn't work the way an adult brain does.
Researchers now believe that drugs and alcohol can disrupt that
massive renovation of the brain during adolescence, making it more
vulnerable to drugs and easier for teens to get addicted.

And scientists say that an addiction that starts early in life is
harder to kick than one that starts later. Nearly half of kids who
are regular drinkers before age 14 will become alcoholics, said Dr.
Danielle Dick, a clinical psychologist and geneticist at Washington
University. That puts early drinkers at three times greater risk of
alcohol addiction than people who wait until age 21 to start
drinking, she said.

Epidemiological studies have shown that most addictions start in
adolescence, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse. And when a teenager's pleasure-chemical systems aren't
fully developed and then get wired to depend on substances for
feeling good, the normal flow of brain chemicals that aid in
learning, decision making and other key processes are often blocked,
Volkow said.

In adults, genetics are more than 50 percent responsible for
addiction to alcohol. So people have long assumed that genes are the
biggest reason kids drink, too.

But new studies of twins in Finland and Missouri showed no evidence
that genetics contributed to alcohol-dependence in 14-year-olds, Dick said.

Instead, Dick said, parental monitoring is one of the most consistent
predictors of whether teens start using alcohol and other drugs.

And that means more than just having a good relationship with your
kids. A good, warm relationship doesn't mean kids are going to tell
parents what they are doing, or with whom.

"Parents might say, 'Oh, if they were doing that, they'd tell me,'
but the reality is, they probably won't," Dick said. What works is
knowing where children are, who they are with and what they are
doing. Children with the highest level of parental monitoring were
less likely to start drinking or using drugs, Dick said.

Once teens start to drink or use drugs, the consequences turn severe.
Recent studies show that teens who start using marijuana before they
turn 17 are at higher risk of developing schizophrenia than people
who didn't use or started smoking marijuana later in adolescence or
young adulthood.

Marijuana has often been called a gateway drug, but most researchers
agree that marijuana doesn't necessarily set up the brain for further
addictions. It does give kids practice in obtaining illicit
substances and access to a subculture where harder drugs are available.

The real gateway drug may be nicotine, experts say. Most kids try
cigarettes before other drugs.

Researchers compared sets of identical twins in which one twin
started smoking before age 17 and the other twin smoked later. Twins
who started smoking before age 17 became addicted to other
substances, such as alcohol or other drugs, more readily than their
twins who waited, Volkow said. Because identical twins have the same
genetic make-up, the addiction of early-smoking twins can't be
chalked up to genetic susceptibility alone, she said.