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For more information about Drinking and Driving, visit the CDC Vital Signs.

Wisconsin Leads the Nation at 25.6% of the Population

New estimates show that binge drinking* is a bigger problem than previously thought. More than 38 million US adults binge drink, about 4 times a month, and the largest number of drinks per binge is on average 8. This behavior greatly increases the chances of getting hurt or hurting others due to car crashes, violence, and suicide. Drinking too much, including binge drinking, causes 80,000 deaths in the US each year and, in 2006 cost the economy $223.5 billion. Binge drinking is a problem in all states, even in states with fewer binge drinkers, because they are binging more often and in larger amounts.

*Binge drinking means men drinking 5 or more alcoholic drinks within a short period of time or women drinking 4 or more drinks within a short period of time.

For more information, check out the CDC Vital Signs.

More than one-fifth of middle and high school students were exposed to secondhand smoke in cars in 2009, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This represents a significant decrease from 2000, when 40 percent of teens were exposed to cigarette smoke in cars, the Associated Press reports.

Exposure to secondhand smoke in cars has been associated with breathing problems and allergy symptoms, according to the report, which is published in the journal Pediatrics. The CDC calls for more restrictions to prevent this exposure.

The findings come from national surveys of students, who were asked how often they rode in cars while someone was smoking in the past week. The most common answer was one or two days, the article notes.

“The car is the only source of exposure for some of these children, so if you can reduce that exposure, it’s definitely advantageous for health,” CDC researcher Brian King said. According to the CDC, opening a car window does not protect children from cigarette smoke inside.

The article notes several states have adopted laws that ban smoking in cars while children are present.

The study was conducted in British Columbia, where the government sets the minimum price for alcohol. The researchers at the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia examined government data from 1989 to 2010.

The article notes the study does not prove that price increases are fully responsible for the change in drinking habits.

The study is published in the journal Addiction.

(from Join Together)  A new study provides clues about the brain mechanisms that drive people to abuse alcohol. The study found a link between how good people feel after they drink, and the amount of endorphins—proteins with opiate-like effects—released in their brain.

Similar findings have been seen in animal studies, but this is the first time they have been observed in humans, according to a news release by the University of California, San Francisco, where the research was conducted. “This is something that we’ve speculated about for 30 years, based on animal studies, but haven’t observed in humans until now,” said lead author Jennifer Mitchell, PhD. “It provides the first direct evidence of how alcohol makes people feel good.”

Researchers studied 15 volunteers; 13 were heavy social drinkers and 12 were not. Women were considered heavy social drinkers if they consumed 10 to 16 drinks a week, while men in that category had 14 to 20 drinks weekly, CNN reports. Women who were not heavy social drinkers had fewer than five drinks a week, while the men had fewer than seven drinks.

The subjects’ brains were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET) to examine the distribution of chemicals produced in response to drinking. In heavy drinkers, just one drink led to the release of more endorphins in two brain regions that play a role in pleasure and reward. They perceived drinking as more pleasurable than the non-heavy drinkers. That feeling leads them to crave alcohol, the researchers said.

They noted that the study, which located the precise areas of the brain where endorphins are released, may provide a possible target for the development of better treatments for alcohol abuse.

The findings appear in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

“Dissolvables” are flavored mints, strips and sticks of smokeless tobacco. These products are not stop-smoking aids. Instead, they are designed to allow people to satisfy their cravings for nicotine in places where smoking is banned.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is test marketing Camel Orbs, Camel Strips and Camel Sticks in two cities, and Star Scientific Inc., is marketing two other dissolvable tobacco products, Ariva and Stonewall. Many public health advocates are concerned about the risks these products pose to children and teens, namely possible addiction and nicotine poisoning.

“If you wanted to design a product that would appeal to youth and addict younger adolescents and adults to nicotine, this would be it,” said Dr. Jonathan Winickoff, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “These products are designed to look like a candy and addict the user permanently.”

Teens can pop these products without any of the telltale signs of smoking cigarettes or the mess associated with snus, which are teabag-like pouches placed between the upper lip and gun. Before long, he said, they’re addicted.

Another worry is accidental ingestion, resulting in nicotine poisoning. An April 2010 study in the journal Pediatrics showed that smokeless tobacco products are the second most common cause of nicotine poisoning in children, after cigarettes.

“If children are already ingesting cigarettes, we cannot doubt that they will ingest dissolvable tobacco that is specifically designed to taste good,” Winickoff said. “Just because they smell like chocolate or mint and look safe, they contain nicotine and are potentially harmful for adolescents and could start a lifetime of nicotine addiction. Parents of young children need to be aware that these products have the potential to cause a serious overdose.”

Mild symptoms of nicotine poisoning include vomiting, nausea, diarrhea and headaches. Severe nicotine poisoning can lead to involuntary twitching, muscle paralysis, heart palpitations, seizures or death.

One milligram (mg) of nicotine can cause vomiting and diarrhea in a small child, according to the study. The Camel dissolvables contain between 0.6 mg and 3.1 mg of nicotine, depending on the product. Smokers inhale about 1 mg of nicotine in a typical cigarette.

When the Pediatrics study was released, Orbs manufacturer R.J. Reynolds stated that it had taken steps to prevent accidental ingestion of Camel dissolvable tobacco products by youth, including child-resistant packaging and educating poison control centers about the products and possible effects of accidental ingestion.

“The bottom line: Tobacco products, along with many other types of goods, need to be kept out of the hands of children,” the statement concluded.

Now all eyes are on the FDA. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gives the agency authority over the manufacture, distribution and marketing of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. Winickoff said he hopes the FDA will do whatever it can to keep these products away from children and teens.

“We could consider capping the amount of nicotine in each piece so you could eliminate or drastically reduce potential to cause a fatal nicotine overdose if the entire package was consumed,” he said.

Other pediatricians and public health advocates raise similar fears about these products.

“You can sneak them into a classroom,” said Dr. Lee Beers, a pediatrician at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “This increases the potential for early tobacco adoption and increasing levels of addiction. There doesn’t really seem to be any reason to have tobacco in a format that is much more easily ingestible and with quite a few downsides, particularly when think about children and adolescents. Children can and will get into anything even if the packages are childproof,” she said.

Dr. Thomas Glynn, director of cancer science and trends at the American Cancer Society, said there are many unknowns about dissolvable tobacco products. “At this point, we don’t know the full range of what is in them,” he said. “I don’t see any potential in these dissolvable products other than to keep people smoking.”

(SOURCES: Jonathan Winickoff, M.D., pediatrician, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and associate professor of pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Lee Beers, M.D., pediatrician, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C.; Thomas J. Glynn, MA, MS, Ph.D., director, Cancer Science and Trends, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Ga. )

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