Drugs and alcohol

A study finds that early drug use strongly predicts substance abuse only if it’s followed by continuing drug use. Early experimentation with alcohol or marijuana isn't necessarily a risk factor for addiction.

In an issue brief, part of a new series, Annenberg Public Policy Center research director Dan Romer reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels on cigarette packs.

The journal Media and Communication has published a special issue on "Adolescents in the Digital Age: Effects on Health and Development," edited by APPC research director Dan Romer.

A national study of teenagers suggests that school drug testing did not deter them from starting to smoke tobacco or marijuana or drink alcohol. But in high schools that had a “positive school climate,” teens were less likely to start smoke cigarettes or marijuana, according to the study, in the January issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. The study compared the effectiveness over one year of school policies of student drug testing with a positive school climate.

Nearly 90 percent of the top-grossing movies over a 25-year period show main characters acting violently, and in 77 percent of the movies those characters also engage in sex-, alcohol- or tobacco-related behavior, a new study has shown. The study published in Pediatrics, by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that more than half of the biggest PG-13 movies featured a main character acting violently and involved in either drinking, sexual behavior or smoking within a five-minute segment.

Dan Romer, director of APPC’s Adolescent Health and Communication Institutes, reviews the evidence on ways to prevent drug abuse in middle and high school youth, focusing on mandatory random drug testing. Since the 1990s, interest has been growing in the use of such tests to deter drug use among teenagers. The review finds that mandatory

Research points to the potential for prevention   Weakness in a cognitive skill called "working memory" predicts both the initiation and the escalation of alcohol use in adolescents ages 10 to 15, according to a longitudinal study by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of