The Alcohol and Other Drugs Educational Conference at CSU Chico call for proposals has been released.  Program submissions are due by February 15th.  Get yours in soon, and share what is working on your campus to prevent alcohol and other drug problems.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports the positive news that fewer deaths occurred on our nation's roads in 2011 (NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 2012a, 2012b).  A lower, but still depressingly high 32,367 people were killed in crashes in 2011.  That’s a 1.9% decrease from 2010, and represents the fewest fatalities since 1949.  When controlling for population growth and increased vehicle miles driven, the fatality rate is about a third what it was back in the early 1980s.

Drunk driving (or more precisely driving with a BAC=.08+) continues to account for a large proportion of the fatal crashes.  But those too declined by 2.5% and now account for 31% of the deaths.

Here are a few important national statics from the report:

A report produced by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (Males, 2012) analyzes California data on youth arrests.  There are two obvious trends: (1) youth arrests have been declining since the 1970's, and (2) marijuana arrests have plunged (61%) in the past year.  Of interest here is the second finding since it directly corresponds to the change in California law making simple possession an infraction instead of a misdemeanor, even for those under 18.  As we noted when the law was enacted, this means holding a bag of marijuana is now a lesser offense for a 17-year-old than holding a can of beer.

Over 1,300 California drivers were randomly stopped on weekend nights and agreed to give alcohol breath tests and oral fluids for drug testing in nine cities across the state.  The survey was anonymous and voluntary.  The methods for the survey closely followed other roadside surveys, and a report is now available on the OTS website (Lacey, Kelley-Baker, Romano, Brainard, & Ramirez, 2012).  Drugs tested included illegal drugs as well as plausibly impairing medications.

Here are some of their main findings:

• Drug-positive drivers made up about 1 in 7 drivers, a third of those drivers tested positive for more than one drug.
• The percent of drivers testing positive for marijuana (7.4%) was almost identical to the percent testing positive for alcohol (7.3%).
• About a quarter of marijuana-positive drivers also tested positive for another drug; about 13.3% marijuana-positive were also positive for alcohol.
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