Risky Behavior - Teens' Experience Of Marijuana

At the beginning of this discussion of drug use, we saw data from the Monitoring the Future Survey (MTF) indicating that the use of marijuana by 12-17-year-olds was up in the 1990s after declining between 1985 and 1990. MTF tells us that by the time they graduate from high school, more than half of the young people in America have tried an illicit drug, usually marijuana. This is about the same percentage as in 1975, when the "drug crisis" was in its infancy.

The graphic above presents statistics (1) from a Partnership for A Drug-Free America³¹survey of 10,000 parents and children and (2) from MTF (2000). If they are right, 41% of 10th graders have tried marijuana at least once, and 58% of teenagers find it easy to procure marijuana (easier to get than beer and equally as easy to come by as cigarettes, kids say, despite a trend toward adoption of punitive measures for the sale of tobacco to minors). In fact, MTF reports: "Every year from 1975 to 1999, at least 82% of high school seniors surveyed have said they find marijuana 'fairly easy' or 'very easy' to obtain… marijuana has been almost universally available to American high school seniors (from 83% to 90%) over at least the past 25 years."

We've passed the 30-year mark in the multibillion-dollar war on drugs. Marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance.³² The Supreme Court recently approved random, suspicionless drug testing of students wishing to participate in extracurricular activities. We send drug-sniffing dogs into schools. Minor marijuana offenses can mean time spent in prison.³³ The government has spent nearly $2 billion on anti-drug advertising, warning that today's marijuana is more potent (thus dangerous) than it was when boomers were using it. Boomer parents order hair and urine drug test kits to surprise their kids, because, as DrugFreeTeenagers.com assures them, "FACT: Drug Users Lie!" But kids still don't get it? In fact, in a display of post-modern irony, teens have turned the 1936 propaganda film "Reefer Madness" into a cult favorite. What's going on here?

Today's pot experimenters are yesterday's D.A.R.E. graduates. D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) reaches an estimated 60-75% of elementary school children in the United States and is employed in more than 50 other countries. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year on D.A.R.E. But is it effective? As far back as 1993 the General Accounting Office found that there was little evidence that "resistance training" programs like D.A.R.E. have reduced the use of drugs by adolescents, and studies still question its effectiveness. What does D.A.R.E. do? "A Different Look at D.A.R.E." quotes a Portland, Maine, D.A.R.E. police officer: "I tell kids they can smoke dope if they want to, as long as they consider the consequences." Conservative Phyllis Schlafly complains that D.A.R.E. does not tell children that drug use is morally wrong. "Their bottom line is, 'Kids, make up your own mind.'" Critics say D.A.R.E. employs lurid scare tactics, demonizing all substance users rather than encouraging moderation and responsibility, and sometimes stimulates the very behavior it seeks to discourage. Some say D.A.R.E. owes its continued existence to politicians' unwillingness to appear "soft on drugs."

What do kids hear about the consequences of early marijuana use? Voluminous literature and pervasive advertising warn that marijuana is addictive, harmful, risky, is a "gateway" to the use of other illegal drugs, and impedes one's ability to develop into a well-adjusted adult. Less voluminous and disseminated is the literature downplaying the risks.³⁴ At some point between D.A.R.E. and high school, though, large numbers of young people experiment with drugs (or observe the behavior by others) and find that the dire warnings they have heard were blown out of proportion. There comes the realization "that smoking one joint will not ruin their lives, so telling them that it will can only make them more cynical than they already are" (Sager).

The Baby Boomer parental dilemma: As charter members of the drug generation, how to talk to their children about drugs? The chart demonstrates what the parents of 20% of 582 young drug rehabilitation clients in four states did — they bonded with their kids through drugs. Other surveys show that as many as half of high school students have not discussed drugs with their parents.

Cannabis sativa (marijuana), says The Honest Cannabis Information Foundation, "is one of the most widely used substances around the world." A 1995 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) tells us: "The US has higher rates of illicit drug use by young people than European nations, as noted by the Monitoring The Future survey… All the participating European countries had a considerably lower rate of lifetime use, averaging 17% [compared to 41% of U.S. tenth graders]…. The US also had one of the lowest proportions of students seeing marijuana use as carrying a risk of harm to the user, and one of the lowest proportions saying that they personally disapprove of marijuana use." If they try it, are they hooked? WHO says the risks of cannabis use "are unlikely to produce public health problems comparable in scale to those currently produced by alcohol and tobacco," and "it is unlikely that the proportion of cannabis users who become very heavy users would ever be as high in industrial societies as it often [is] for stimulants such as tobacco or cocaine, since heavy use of a stimulant fits more easily into the rhythms of daily life in such societies." Is there a teen drug crisis? In opting for incarceration over treatment, do we have our priorities straight?

Sources: Chart: Partnership for A Drug-Free America, "The Boomer-Rang: Baby Boomers Seriously Underestimating Presence of Drugs in Their Children's Lives; retrieved August 1, 2002, from http://www.mediacampaign.org/newsletter/fall98/update13.html; and Johnston, Lloyd D. Johnston., PhD, et al., Monitoring The Future: National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2000, Volume 1: Secondary School Students (Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, August 2001). QEV Analytics, National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VI: Teens (New York, NY: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, February 2001). Chuck Thomas, "Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United States," retrieved August 1, 2002, from http://www.mpp.org/arrests/fas61699.html. U.S. GAO, Confronting the Drug Problem, retrieved August 1, 2002, from http://www.gao.gov/. "A Different Look at D.A.R.E.," retrieved August 1, 2002, from http://www.drcnet.org/DARE/index.html. Ryan H. Sager, "The Drug War: Teach Them Well," National Review, May 1, 2000, p30+. Terry O'Neill, "Redesigning DARE," Report Newsmagazine (Edmonton, Canada), March 19, 2001. Wayne Hall et al., "WHO Project on Health Implications of Cannabis Use: A Comparative Appraisal of the Health and Psychological Consequences of Alcohol, Cannabis, Nicotine and Opiate Use," August 28, 1995, retrieved July 31, 2002, from http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/general/who-index.htm. The Honest Cannabis Information Foundation, retrieved July 31, 2002, from http://www.thc.nl. Donna Leinwand, "Teen Addicts Point to Parents," USA Today, August 24, 2000, p. 1 (primary source: Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates' survey in April 2000 of 582 drug rehabilitation clients.