Newswise — A single marijuana joint has the same effect on the lungs as smoking up to five cigarettes at a time, indicates research published ahead of print in the journal Thorax.
The researchers base their findings on 339 adults up to the age of 70, selected from an ongoing study of respiratory health, and categorized […]

Newswise - Problem drinkers who took the craving-curbing drug nalmefene whenever they felt the desire to drink alcohol reported fewer heavy drinking days each month than drinkers who took a placebo pill, but both groups reported marked reductions in heavy drinking days. Nalmefene is not yet available in the United States; it is still considered […]

Children show signs of addiction almost immediately.
UMASS Medical School - A new study published in the July 2007 Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that 10 percent of youth who become hooked on cigarettes are addicted within two days of first inhaling from a cigarette, and 25 percent are addicted within a month. The […]

Short-lived cognitive boost from nicotine soon overwhelmed by long-range toxic effects of cigarette smoke on brain.
UCSF - After six to nine months of abstinence from alcohol, recovering alcoholics who were also chronic smokers showed a significantly lower rate of improvement in tests of memory, reasoning, judgment, and visual/spatial coordination than non-smoking recovering alcoholics in a […]

Newswise - More than one per cent of eleven year olds admit using performance enhancing drugs to do better in sports reports a study published online ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
By the age of 15, the proportion taking them had increased from 1.2 to 3% and users said they were […]

Health Behavior News Service - Adding to the evidence that maternal drug use can have lasting effects, a new study finds that young schoolchildren of cocaine-using mothers scored more poorly on attention tests.
Researchers looked at test scores of 415 African-American children who took tests at age 5 or 7 (now 14 to 16 years old). […]