"In humans, adolescence, namely the period between the early teenage years and early twenties, is a time of heightened susceptibility to the effects of addictive drugs, but previous studies have struggled to explain why. Our studies support the idea that regulation of protein synthesis by eIF2 might be the underlying cause," says senior author Mauro Costa-Mattioli.
1) Kids have less experience from which to pull from to inform them that an action might be harmful, how an action might affect those around them or when they are doing too much of something.
2) How the development of the prefrontal cortex affects decision making is a thoroughly studied topic and it is very clear that decision making ability becomes better as we mature(when looking at a significant population...again there are OBVIOUSLY outliers).
