Researchers at the University of New South Wales who have found further evidence that cannabis can cause psychotic illness, are cautioning that the public need to be warned of the danger associated with the drug.
A new study has provided the first conclusive evidence that cannabis use significantly hastens the onset of psychotic illnesses during the critical years of brain development – with possible life-long consequences. [continue reading…]
A European research group has studied how smoking habits are transmitted within the home. The results show that, in homes where both parents are present, there is a significant degree of inter-generational transmission of smoking habits between parents and children, particularly between individuals of the same gender.
“Fathers transmit their smoking habits to a statistically significant level to their sons, and the same is true of mothers and daughters. However, if a mother smokes it does not seem to impact on the probability of her son smoking, and similarly a father that smokes does not affect his daughter”, Loureiro, a researcher at the USC and co-author of the study, tells SINC.
The research, which has been published in the journal Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, is based on information from the British Household Panel Survey 1994-2002. “We selected this data source because it gives detailed information on the products consumed in households, including tobacco, making it possible to analyse the transmission of smoking habits between generations”, the experts explain. [continue reading…]
The growing numbers of new cases of substance abuse disorders are perplexing. After all, the course of drug addiction so often ends badly. The negative consequences of drug abuse appear regularly on TV, from stories of celebrities behaving in socially inappropriate and self-destructive ways while intoxicated to dramatization of the rigors of drug withdrawal on “Intervention” and other reality shows.
Schools now educate students about the risks of addiction. While having a keen awareness of the negative long-term repercussions of substance use protects some people from developing addictions, others remain vulnerable.
One reason that education alone cannot prevent substance abuse is that people who are vulnerable to developing substance abuse disorders tend to exhibit a trait called “delay discounting”, which is the tendency to devalue rewards and punishments that occur in the future. Delay discounting may be paralleled by “reward myopia”, a tendency to opt for immediately rewarding stimuli, like drugs.
Thus, people vulnerable to addiction who know that drugs are harmful in the long run tend to devalue this information and to instead be drawn to the immediately rewarding effects of drugs.
Parents are you worried about how much time your kids have been spending playing their new video games since the holidays? Well your worries just may be justified. A new study by an international research team — including an Iowa State University psychologist — found further evidence that video game “addiction” exists globally and that greater amounts of gaming, lower social competence and greater impulsivity were risk factors for becoming pathological gamers. [continue reading…]
