4 Troubled Teens Blog

Children who are cigarette smokers in middle school are more likely to engage in troubled behaviors as teens, according to a new study from the Rand Corporation.

Researchers collected saliva samples from 2,000 middle school students to determine which children were smokers. By the time the early smokers were eighteen years old, 58 percent had engaged in two or more problem behaviors, including binge drinking, selling drugs, abusing drugs, and dropping out of school.

Those children who had not tried smoking in middle school were one and a half times more likely to have grade point averages of 3.0 (B) or above and to live in an intact family.

This study appears in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Labels: smoking, smokers, middle_school

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 0 Comments

A middle school student in Lee County, Mississippi, has undertaken an innovative initiative to help prevent underage drinking in her community.

In a Dec. 31 article in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal , writer Danza Johnson described the alcohol abuse prevention efforts of Kateland Kennedy:

Even though the Mooreville Middle School student is only 12 years old, Kateland has a very grownup message for her friends.

"Drinking as a teenager can ruin your life," she said. "It's wrong for adults to give alcohol to teenagers so we decided to do the Sticker Shock Campaign to warn teens and remind store clerks that selling alcohol to a kid is wrong and against the law."

Kateland and about 10 friends will put stickers that read: "It's illegal to buy or provide alcohol to anyone under the age of 21," on the containers of every alcohol beverage at the selected stores.

Region III Mental Health Center and the Lee County Sheriff's Department have teamed up with Kateland to get the word out. Sheriff Jim Johnson said it's one thing to have him or other adults telling teens not to drink, but it doesn't hold nearly the weight as hearing it come from one of their own.

 

Labels: prevention, alcohol_abuse, middle_school

Posted By: Aspen Education Group 1 Comment