Objective: To establish the prevalence of mood and wellness behaviors in college students across a school year. Methods: 1,554 college students (69.4% female; average age 18.8 years) were followed with daily surveys on wellness behaviors for the school year. 1,207 participants completed at least 50% of daily surveys on mood, exercise, sleep,…

Causal models of adolescent substance abuse from a family systems perspective are developed using data from a large-scale family therapy efficacy grant. It is argued that the literature on families of adolescent substance abusers is scattered in its theoretical and empirical efforts, tends to not account for individual and family developmental…

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) conducted campus-wide surveys on drug and alcohol use in 1977, 1983, 1987, and 1992. This survey was generated during the 1992 Fall semester. Results show that alcohol and drug use at MTSU has changed little in 15 years. The most noticeable change was the reduced use of marijuana by males. Cigarette smoking…

Many age-related biologic and physiologic changes can have important influences on drug pharmacology in elderly persons. Successful management depends upon good communications among health care providers, fitness instructors, and the medication user. Each exerciser should be monitored and reviewed at regular intervals. Medications may be a…

This paper explores the roles that "entheogens" have played in religions from early shaman times to contemporary indigenous and syncretic practices. The word "entheogen" was coined to denote pschyoactive chemicals and botanicals which engender the experience of God within (Ott, 1993). Part 1 of the paper points to three…

Despite concern over the co-occurrence of substance use and unplanned pregnancy among adolescents, little information is available about drug use before and during pregnancy in adolescence. The present study examined substance use among a sample of premaritally pregnant adolescents (n=241) who were interviewed as part of an ongoing longitudinal…

The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company is planning to introduce a so-called "smokeless cigarette". This product called Premier is an aluminum cylinder filled with porous alumina beads, corked with charcoal. The company has strongly hinted that the cigarette will provide the user with a dose of nicotine adequate to sustain nicotine dependence…

To ascertain the incidence of drug use in a rural area and to provide insight into the covariates of illegal drug use which might be useful in developing prevention programs, data were collected in the spring of 1981 from 2,060 or 83.2% of all students grades 8 through 12 in a southern Georgia county. Data were collected during regularly scheduled…

This study was conducted to develop a method to evaluate the effectiveness of Project CODE (Collaborating on Drug Education), a parent education program in drug prevention. Project CODE was designed to use parents, in collaboration with professional educators, as teachers of other parents. Teams of two parents and two educators received 60 hours…

This document examines the incidence of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) among adolescents in the United States and identifies several risk factors for AIDS among this population. It classifies adolescents' risk for contracting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection by the degree to which adolescents engage in behaviors that are…

A survey of 857 students at a large midwestern university provided information regarding the frequency and type of drugs used by students at any time and shortly before driving. The drugs most frequently used at least once in the prior year were alcohol, marijauna, caffeine, and nicotine. Significant association was found between alcohol use…

Latent growth modeling (LGM) has emerged as a flexible analytic technique for modeling change over time because it can describe individual variability in terms of initial status and in growth. LGM methodology can also provide a means for testing the contribution of other variables in order to explain variability in those initial levels and growth…

A study of legal and illegal drug use rates among working class adolescents in Georgia was conducted in a small city of 16,000 residents. Students at the local high school completed a questionnaire administered by their classroom teacher. Of the 296 female and 283 male participants, 102 were black and 477 were white. The results indicate that…

Although studies document increases in both contraceptive use, and, more recently, in condom use among adolescents, rates of unintended pregnancies remain high and sexually transmitted diseases in adolescents are rising. The data presented here represent the first wave of data obtained in an ongoing longitudinal study of the patterns of drug use…

Surveys of the nation's jail and prison populations suggest that about 75% have used illicit drugs at one time or another. Incidence rates for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases among prison inmates is much higher in correctional systems than in the population as a whole. In this study an AIDS prevention and education program for…