At least some experimental use of alcohol and other drugs is also common during adolescence, with this use perhaps reflecting an example of risk-taking behavior. For example, in the Monitoring the Future study of 2007, approximately 50% of high school seniors reported having used an illicit drug during their lifetime (Johnston et al., 2008). Frequent and excessive use of alcohol is particularly widespread among adolescents, with approximately 25% of 12th graders reporting an episode of binge drinking within the past month. Importantly, drug and alcohol use during adolescence has been shown to correlate with an increased incidence of drug and alcohol problems in adulthood (DeWit et al., 2000; Grant et al., 2001). Similarly, using a simple animal model of adolescence in the rat, we have demonstrated that adolescents drink 2–3 times more ethanol than do adults (Brunell & Spear, 2005: Doremus et al., 2005, Vetter et al., 2007), in part seemingly due to their insensitivity to some of the adverse and incapacitating effects of ethanol (see Spear & Varlinskaya, 2005 for references and review). It is likely that the behavioral
