Adolescents who experienced negative alcohol-related consequences are willing to experience these consequences again in the future.

Alcohol use and risky single occasion drinking are common among adolescents and are associated with a higher risk of various negative social, physical, academic, or sexual consequences. Studies have shown that among college students, willingness to experience negative consequences is associated with a higher likelihood of experiencing these consequences in the future. However, it remains unclear how experiencing negative consequences influences adolescents' willingness to experience them again. Based on a representative sample of 1,333 alcohol-using 14- to 15-year-olds (47.9% female), a path model was used to examine the associations between risky drinking, negative social and physical consequences, and willingness to experience the specific consequence in the future. As hypothesized, more frequent risky drinking was positively associated with experiencing negative consequences (i.e., saying or doing embarrassing things, regretted sexual experiences, impairment of schoolwork, problems with parents/friends, accident or injury, hangover, vomiting, memory lapses). Contrary to our second hypothesis, adolescents who experienced a negative consequence were also consistently willing to experience it in the future. Findings suggest that adolescents may see the experience of negative consequences as a necessary evil to attain the positive consequences. Prevention efforts may benefit from focusing on ways of attaining positive consequences by promoting alternatives to engaging in risky drinking practices, as well as reducing negative consequences (e.g., by promoting protective behavioral strategies). (PsycINFO Database Record

Adolescents smoking in the crosslight of other substance use and parental and peers' smoking behaviors.

This study investigates the connectedness of adolescents' smoking status, history of alcohol and cannabis use, and parental and peers' smoking, dimensions only rarely explored concurrently. Multinomial regression models that compared the smoking status of adolescents were estimated based on a representative sample of 3,560 adolescents aged 14-15 from Switzerland. While 49.0% of respondents had never smoked, 9.0% smoked on a daily basis and 12.0% occasionally; 32.6% had never drank alcohol and 74.7% had never used cannabis. Overall, parental and peers' smoking and other substance use factors are significantly associated with smoking status. Yet, history of substance use revealed less consistent associations with smoking status among current smokers (daily versus occasional smoking). The findings highlight the connectedness of adolescents' and other substance use behaviors and support the relevance of concurrent prevention initiatives targeting adolescents with specific substance use profiles and/or growing up in prosmoking social milieus.

Addiction research centres and the nurturing of creativity: The Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems. Past, present and future.

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of the history, the current status and the future of substance use research at the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems (SIPA). Although founded originally by the temperance movement in 1901, its policy has shifted over time towards one which accepts an alcohol-consuming culture made up of self-determined but well-informed consumers, while still supporting those who choose to live an abstinent life. In the beginning, SIPA was involved primarily in collecting alcohol-related information and making it available to professionals and the general public. From the late 1960s SIPA began conducting its own research projects; by the mid-1970s it had set up its own in-house research department. In 2001, SIPA was appointed a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Substance Abuse, Research, Prevention and Documentation. As a private non-governmental organization, most of its funding comes from external research commissions. SIPA participates in a variety of international projects [e.g. Gender Alcohol and Culture: An International Study (GenACIS), European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Drugs (ESPAD) and Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC)] and contributes to numerous national research projects dealing with substance use. It has also forged close links with more than 50 other research institutions in Switzerland and world-wide. Thanks to its work over the last 30 years, SIPA has become a chief port of call for alcohol use research in Switzerland. In the future, SIPA will continue to monitor substance use, while stepping up its prevention research activities and ensuring that it is able to react more promptly to emerging phenomena.