TUESDAY, July 1 (HealthDay News) -- The United States has one of the highest lifetime rates of tobacco and alcohol use and the highest percentage of people who reported using marijuana or cocaine at least once in their lives, a new survey shows.

Researchers from the World Health Organization analyzed alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug use in 17 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania.

Among the major findings:

• The use of all types of drugs in the survey is becoming increasingly common in all the countries. Males were more likely than females to have used all drug types in all countries and all age groups.
• Younger adults were more likely than older adults to have used these substances.
• People with higher incomes were more likely to have used legal and illegal drugs.
• Alcohol has been used by most survey respondents in the Americas, Europe, Japan and New Zealand, compared to smaller percentages of respondents in the Middle East, Africa and China.
• Alcohol use by age 15 was far more common among Europeans than among those in the Middle East or Africa.
• Lifetime tobacco use was most common in the United States (74 percent), Lebanon (67 percent), Mexico and the Ukraine (60 percent and 61 percent) and the Netherlands (58 percent).

The study is in the July 1 issue of PLoS Medicine.

"These findings add to our understanding of substance abuse worldwide and suggest that drug use is still a major problem in this country, pointing to the need for more effective prevention interventions," Dr. Elias Z. Zerhouni, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in a prepared statement.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the NIH, provided some of the funding for the study.

"A survey of lifetime use does not provide the entire picture, however, because it does not reflect current use or trends over time," NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow said in a prepared statement. "For example, although lifetime use of tobacco was reported by this study to be 74 percent in the U.S., current use has been documented at approximately 30 percent."

More information

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has more about alcohol and tobacco.

FRIDAY, June 27 (HealthDay News) -- Anyone who has arrived at Chicago O'Hare, Orlando or Dallas airports during one of the dozens of huge medical meetings held every year will no doubt encounter tens of thousands of specialists from all over world thronging the hallways, the Starbucks, the luggage claim area.

Of course, the attendees use jet fuel to get to the meeting and gas to get from the airport to the hotel where, once they're checked in, they'll have the option or reusing or not reusing their towels.

But an expert writing in the June 28 issue of the British Medical Journal argues that medical meetings should be a thing of the past.

The author, Dr. Malcolm Green, a professor emeritus of respiratory medicine at Imperial College London, confesses to having attended such meetings himself throughout an illustrious career going back 30 years.

"This is not a matter of whether, but when," Green said. "The adaptations to climate change over the next few decades will be massive. This will be an inevitable part of that change. Canute was unable to hold back the tide, and we will be unable to hold back the consequences of climate change. The current 'crisis' of oil prices is here to stay and will intensify."

Green makes the point that the relatively cozy meeting of the American Thoracic Society draws more than 15,000 respiratory doctors and scientists each year, some 3,500 of whom are from Europe. The 2006 conference in San Diego, by one estimate, resulted in 100 million person air miles and produced a carbon burden of 10,800 tons.

The American Cardiac Society meeting, with about 45,000 attendees, represents 300 million person air miles. Add to that the American Heart Association last year, which had almost 26,000 attendees, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology's meeting, which drew crowds of 34,000 or more.

Green estimates that the overall impact of travel to and from conferences is at least 6 billion person air miles a year, or 600,000 tons of carbon, equivalent to the sustainable carbon emissions for 500,000 people in India. And this doesn't include the impact from the use of hotels, conference centers and more.

So, Green argues, virtual networks and virtual meetings should be the order of the day.

"Teenagers and others get to know each other and conduct all manner of relationships over the Internet," Green said. "It is just as possible for researchers and doctors to establish professional relationships and exchange information, ideas and discussions. It will require learning new ways of working, indeed, but this should not be unattainable."

And curbing air travel has another advantage not mentioned by Green.

"Close contact is a factor in the spread of respiratory diseases," said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "[There was] a reduction and delay of the spread of influenza in 2002 due to the curb on flying and the reduction in air travel after 9/11."

However, another doctor countered in the same issue of the journal that giving up all medical conferences will have little effect on global warming, since the majority of international travel is recreational in nature.

James Owen Drife, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology from Leeds General Infirmary in England, wrote that conferences are essential for stimulating global initiatives in the medical community. Cutting back on conferences that duplicate each other is a reasonable option, he acknowledged.

However, "hiding behind our computer screens and pretending that this is helping the planet" isn't the answer, Drife added.

Adding to that point was yet another American expert. "I absolutely agree that we all should do what we can to reduce our carbon footprint, but does somebody really think if physicians stopped traveling to international conferences that all planes would be grounded?" said Dr. Kirby Donnelly, department head of environmental and occupational health at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health.

"There are a lot of things we can do other than stop flying," he added. "We could do a lot more with conferences and video conferences. But, still, the face-to-face contact is extremely important and the opportunity to make connections."

More information

Calculate your own carbon footprint at carbonfootprint.com  .

THURSDAY, June 26 (HealthDay News) -- Adding small co-payments to Medicaid prescription drug plans reduces the use of medications by patients with chronic diseases, says a U.S. study.

Daniel M. Hartung, of Oregon Health & Science University, and his colleagues analyzed the effect of small co-payments -- $2 for generic and $3 for brand-name -- for prescription drugs introduced for Oregon Medicaid enrollees in 2003. The co-pay fees weren't required for patients who were unable to pay.

The researchers examined pharmacy claims data on about 117,000 Medicare enrollees with depression, schizophrenia, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The patients' overall use of prescription drugs decreased by about 17 percent after introduction of the co-pay policy.

"Subjects with chronic diseases were less likely to reduce the use of drugs used for that disease compared with drugs not for that disease," the study authors wrote.

Most state Medicaid programs now use co-payments to help control prescription drug costs, but few studies have examined how these co-payments affect medication use, the researchers noted.

"This study suggests that in response to cost-sharing, patients discriminate what therapies they reduce based on the diseases they have," they wrote.

The study was published in the June issue of Medical Care.

In Oregon, co-payments for some outpatient services were introduced at the same time as the drug co-payments. But there were no significant changes in the use of those outpatient services, the study found.

More information

The U.S. Social Security Administration offers help with Medicare prescription drug costs.

FRIDAY, June 20 (HealthDay News) -- Hazardous drinking -- drinking more than guidelines recommend -- is common and needs to be recognized as a genuine public health problem, Finnish researchers say.

Currently, alcohol-use disorders are divided into two categories: alcohol abuse/harmful use and alcohol dependence. Some experts believe these two categories aren't sufficient and that hazardous drinking should be added as a diagnosis that precedes the other two.

"This is an issue that needs to be debated. Current tools... do not allow for a phenomenon like hazardous drinking, when a person drinks too much and is at risk but is not alcohol dependent," Dr. Mauri Aalto, chief physician at Finland's National Public Health Institute, said in a prepared statement.

Aalto and his colleagues analyzed data on 4,477 Finns, ages 30 to 64, who took part in a national health survey in 2000 and found the prevalence of hazardous drinking was 5.8 percent.

Men were defined as hazardous drinkers if they had 24 or more standard drinks a week during the preceding year, while women were hazardous drinkers if they had 16 or more standard drinks a week.

The study also found that hazardous drinking was more common among men, people older than 40, unemployed people versus the employed, and those who were cohabitating, divorced or separated, or unmarried.

The study was published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and is expected to be in the September print issue. The findings support the view that hazardous drinking is a genuine public health issue, the researchers said.

"A hazardous drinker may see many other people around him or her drinking as much as him or herself," Aalto said. "This, together with not yet experiencing any alcohol-related harm, may lead the individual to wrongly think that there is no need to reduce drinking. However, hazardous drinkers do not include alcohol dependents, who usually drink a lot more. Alcohol-dependent drinkers already have significant alcohol-related harms, and it is more difficult for them to change their drinking habits."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about alcohol consumption.