Availability of Convenience Stores and Adolescent Alcohol Use in Taiwan: A Multilevel Analysis of National Surveys.
Availability of convenience stores and adolescent alcohol use in Taiwan: a multilevel analysis of national surveys.
Addiction. 2013 Jun 17;
Wang SH, Lin IC, Chen CY, Chen DR, Chan TC, Chen WJ
AIM: To examine the association between alcohol in school environments and adolescent alcohol use over the previous 6 months. DESIGNS: A multilevel logistic regression analysis of cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2004, 2005, and 2006 was performed. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTINGS: A total of 52,214 students aged 11 to 19 years from 387 middle or high schools were selected from a nationally representative, multistage, stratified probability sampling across Taiwan. MEASUREMENTS: Information on sociodemographic features and substance use experiences was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The alcohol in the environment was measured using the availability of convenience stores surrounding the schools. Using geographical information systems, the weighted numbers of convenience stores within 1 km, a 12-15 min walk, of a school were calculated. The schools were later categorized into three subgroups via the tertile of nearby convenience stores. FINDINGS: Considering the compositional characteristics, the availability of convenience stores was found to account for 1.5% of the school-level variance of youthful drinking. The odds ratios (95% confidence interval) of alcohol use over the previous 6 months among youth attending schools with medium and high availability were 1.04 (0.96-1.13) and 1.08 (1.00-1.17), respectively, with a p-value of 0.04 in the trend test. CONCLUSION: The greater availability of convenience stores near a school is associated with an increased risk of alcohol use among adolescents over the previous 6 months. HubMed – addiction
Effects of reward and punishment on brain activations associated with inhibitory control in cigarette smokers.
Addiction. 2013 Jun 17;
Luijten M, O’Connor DA, Rossiter S, Franken IH, Hester R
BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Susceptibility to use of addictive substances may in part result from a greater preference for an immediate small reward relative to a larger delayed reward or relative insensitivity to punishment. This fMRI study examined the neural basis of inhibiting an immediately rewarding stimulus to obtain a larger delayed reward in smokers. We also investigated whether punishment could modulate inhibitory control. DESIGN: The Monetary Incentive Go/NoGo (MI-Go/NoGo) task was administered that provided three types of reward outcomes contingent on inhibitory control performance over rewarding stimuli: inhibition failure was either followed by no monetary reward (neutral condition), a small monetary reward with immediate feedback (reward condition) or immediate monetary punishment (punishment condition). In the reward and punishment conditions, successful inhibitory control resulted in larger delayed rewards. SETTING: Community sample of smokers in the Melbourne (Australia) area. PARTICIPANTS: Nineteen smokers were compared with seventeen demographically matched non-smoking controls. MEASUREMENTS: Accuracy, reaction times and brain activation associated with the MI-Go/NoGo task. FINDINGS: Smokers showed hyperactivation in the right insula (p<.01,CI:-1.03/-.19), inferior and middle frontal gyrus (p<.01,CI:.69/-.15), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (p=.001,CI:-.19/.24) and inferior parietal lobe (p<.01,CI:-.71/-.17) both during inhibition of an immediately rewarding stimulus to obtain a larger delayed reward, and during inhibition of neutral stimuli. Group differences in brain activity were not significant in the punishment condition in the right insula and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, most likely as a result of increased activation in non-smoking controls. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with non-smokers, smokers?showed increased neural activation when resisting immediately rewarding stimuli and may be less sensitive to punishment as a strategy to increase control over rewarding stimuli. HubMed – addiction
Driving under the influence (DUI) among patients in opioid maintenance treatment (OMT). A registry-based national cohort study.
Addiction. 2013 Jun 17;
Bukten A, Herskedal A, Skurtveit S, Bramness JG, Clausen T
AIMS: To investigate convictions for driving under the influence (DUI) before, during and after opioid maintenance treatment (OMT) and to examine factors associated with convictions for DUI during treatment. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Treatment data on all patients who started OMT in Norway between 1997 and 2003 (n =3221) were cross-linked with national criminal records using unique person identifiers. Patients were followed over a 9-year period, before, during and in periods out of opioid maintenance treatment. MEASUREMENTS: Data were formal charges leading to convictions recorded during 4 different time periods: three years prior to application, waiting-list, in-treatment, and in periods out of treatment. FINDINGS: During OMT, convictions for DUI were reduced by almost 40% compared with pre-application levels. The conviction rate for DUI for males in the pre-application period was 9.59 per 100 person-years (PY) and for females, 3.44/100PY. During OMT, rates of DUI convictions were reduced to 5.97/100PY among men and to 1.09/100PY among women. However, when estimating the effect of OMT on convictions for DUI, the interaction between gender and exposure to OMT was not statistically significant. Patients who remained in continuous treatment had fewer convictions for DUI during treatment compared with patients in discontinuous treatment. Compared with patients having no road traffic convictions during the pre-application period, patients with two or more pre-application convictions for DUI had higher odds (OR = 3.69 [2.28-5.90]) for further convictions for DUI during OMT. CONCLUSION: In Norway, patients receiving opioid maintenance therapy (OMT) have reduced convictions for driving under the influence (DUI) compared?with their pre-treatment levels. Being male and having a prior history of several convictions for DUI were found to be important risk factors for convictions for DUI during OMT. HubMed – addiction