Kids' Drug Use Increases (Pt.2)

(Continued from January 1, 2011) ..... "These high rates of marijuana use during the teen and pre-teen years, when the brain continues to develop, places our young people at particular risk," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement. "Not only does marijuana affect learning, judgment, and motor skills, but research tells us that about one in six people who start using it as adolescents become addicted."

Well, now we go from behavioral and disciplinary issues to the added issue of the retardation of brain growth. According to the report, marijuana use affects learning, judgment, and motor skills when used in adolescence. Concerned, yet?

The perception that regular marijuana smoking is harmful decreased among 10th-graders from 59.5 percent to 57.2 percent and among 12th-graders from 52.4 percent to 46.8 percent in 2010.

"We should examine the extent to which the debate over medical marijuana and marijuana legalization for adults is affecting teens' perceptions of risk," Volkow said. "We must also find better ways to communicate to teens that marijuana use can harm their short-term performance as well as their long-term potential."

These last two paragraphs, of course, illustrate a large part of the problem – over half of our 10th grade kids do not believe that regular marijuana smoking is harmful.

The use of the drug Ecstasy also increased, according to the survey, with 2.4 percent of eighth-graders and 4.7 percent of 10th-graders saying they had used the drug in the past year. That's up from 1.3 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively.

Although abuse of the prescription drug Vicodin during the past four years decreased among high school seniors from 9.7 percent to 8 percent, the use of OxyContin, another prescription opiate, stayed about the same for 12th-graders at 5.1 percent.

How do our kids get their hands on Ecstasy and Vicodin? We would have been afraid to touch a candy cigarette and now a few kids are actually able to acquire hardcore drugs.

In a bit of good news, binge drinking continued to drop. Among high school seniors, 23.2 percent reported having had five or more drinks in a row during the past two weeks, down from 25.2 percent in 2009 and a drop from the peak of 31.5 percent in 1998.

Well, some good news – sort of. Yes, binge drinking has decreased, but we still have over 20% of our high school seniors engaging in the nefarious act. 

(Please come back next Saturday for the 3rd and final part)

Paul W. Reeves