Teen Marijuana Use on the Rise
By Jill Pate - FF/S
About one in 16 high school seniors uses marijuana daily or near-daily, the annual Monitoring the Future Survey found. The survey also found that for the second year in a row, more 12th graders said they used marijuana than smoked cigarettes in the previous month. Teens in all three grades showed more favorable attitudes toward the drug, according to the national survey of more than 46,000 teens.
The survey’s lead investigator, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), blamed the rising use among teens in the past three years on publicity surrounding medical marijuana. “Young people are increasingly seeing marijuana as not dangerous,” said lead investigator Lloyd Johnston of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. When the proportion of teens who view marijuana as risky declines, Johnston says, use usually increases.
Teen marijuana use fell from 2002 to 2007, said Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funds the annual survey. But today’s eighth-graders “have been exposed to a very different perspective on marijuana.” More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana, so teens may tend to view the drug as beneficial, and not risky.
Teens don’t tend to consider that in the case of medical marijuana the amount of marijuana a person is given, and the make-up of the marijuana is controlled. Medical marijuana is typically dispensed in a pill form with a prescribed strength. In the case of “street” marijuana there is no knowing what is in it or where it comes from. Street marijuana is often found to be laced with dangerous additives or other drugs. In addition, with street marijuana there is no way to control or regulate how much a person is using.
Marijuana interferes with memory and learning, which is of particular concern in teens whose brains aren’t fully developed. The vast majority of people currently using medical marijuana are adults with conditions such as glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and cancer.
Marijuana, unfortunately, wasn’t the only drug teens used more this year than last, the survey found. Ecstasy use rose in all three grades surveyed, particularly among 8th and 10th graders.
For more information on the Monitoring the Future Survey, please visit www.monitoringthefuture.org.
