Drug Free Comfort’s primary focus is the community’s youth and preventing them from starting the use of dangerous and illegal drugs.
Recent trends indicate that Vaping is the entry point to the drug world for many of our youth.
A 2022 Texas school report indicates that 30% of 12th graders in the U.S. have used marijuana and that 20% of 12th graders currently vape. Vaping devices and their vaping cartridges are readily available in our county and community at gas stations and vape shops. The entry vape is usually a fruit-flavored liquid that is vaporized in the device.
Many will have high levels of nicotine which can be addictive and others can have THC, the psychoactive ingredient of marijuana or hemp-based products. Some have even had fentanyl or other drugs in them.
A study of nearly 10,000 adolescents funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has identified distinct differences in the brain structures of those who used substances before age 15 compared to those who did not.
Many of these structural brain differences appeared to exist in childhood before any substance use, suggesting they may play a role in the risk of substance use initiation later in life, in tandem with genetic, environmental, and other neurological factors.
“This adds to some emerging evidence that an individual’s brain structure, alongside their unique genetics, environmental exposures, and interactions among these factors, may impact their level of risk and resilience for substance use and addiction,” said Nora Volkow M.D., director of NIDA.
“Understanding the complex interplay between the factors that contribute and that protect against drug use is crucial for informing effective prevention interventions and providing support for those who may be most vulnerable,” Volkow said.
Among the 3,460 adolescents who initiated substances before age 15, most (90.2%) reported trying alcohol, with considerable overlap with nicotine and/or cannabis use; 61.5% and 52.4% of kids initiating nicotine and cannabis, respectively, also reported initiating alcohol.
Substance initiation was associated with a variety of brain-wide (global) as well as more regional structural differences primarily involving the cortex, some of which were substance-specific.
While these data could someday help inform clinical prevention strategies, the researchers emphasize that brain structure alone cannot predict substance use during adolescence, and that these data should not be used as a diagnostic tool. The study, published in “JAMA Network Open,” used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, (ABCD Study), the largest longitudinal study of brain development and health in children and adolescents in the United States, which is supported by the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and nine other institutes, centers, and offices.
Using data from the ABCD Study, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis assessed MRI scans taken of 9,804 children across the U.S. when they were ages 9 to 11 — at “baseline” — and followed the participants over three years to determine whether certain aspects of brain structure captured in the baseline MRIs were associated with early substance initiation.
They monitored for alcohol, nicotine, and/or cannabis use, the most common substances used in early adolescence, as well as use of other illicit substances.
The researchers compared MRIs of 3,460 participants who reported substance initiation before age 15 from 2016 to 2021 to those who did not (6,344).
They assessed both global and regional differences in brain structure, looking at measures like volume, thickness, depth of brain folds, and surface area, primarily in the brain cortex.
The researchers identified five brain structural differences at the global level between those who reported substance initiation before the age of 15 and those who did not.
These included greater total brain volume and greater subcortical volume in those who indicated substance initiation.
An additional 39 brain structure differences were found at the regional level, with approximately 56% of the regional variation involving cortical thickness. Some brain structural differences also appeared unique to the type of substance used.
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