Fewer Teens See Risk From Regular Marijuana User

The percentage of teens who think there is a great risk from being a regular marijuana user has dropped, according to a new survey. The Monitoring the Future survey found only 39.5 percent of 12th graders think regular marijuana use is harmful, down from 44.1 percent last year.

Monitoring the Future is an annual survey that measures drug use and attitudes among students in grades 8, 10 and 12. The survey found 6.5 percent of high school seniors smoke marijuana daily, compared with 6 percent in 2003, and 2.4 percent in 1993, CNN reports.

“This is not just an issue of increased daily use,” National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Nora D. Volkow, MD said in a news release. “It is important to remember that over the past two decades, levels of THC – the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – have gone up a great deal, from 3.75 percent in 1995 to an average of 15 percent in today’s marijuana cigarettes. Daily use today can have stronger effects on a developing teen brain than it did 10 or 20 years ago.”

Almost 23 percent of seniors say they smoked marijuana in the month prior to the survey, and just over 36 percent say they smoked it during the past year.

According to Gary Pearce, Director of Talbot Partnership for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Prevention, parents need to be aware of this trend. Despite youth and adult perceptions of marijuana, studies shows that the main chemical present in marijuana, THC, adversely affects human brain and mental health. In addition, regular use of marijuana shows the same respiratory problems as cigarette smoking, increases the risk of heart attack, increases the likelihood of developing cancer of the head or neck, and affects the immune system’s ability to fight disease.

Mr. Pearce also advised that studies show parents significantly underestimate their teenagers’ use of drugs. Nearly 35 % of high school seniors use marijuana, while only five percent of parents believed their teens had used marijuana over the past year.

For further information on the dangers of marijuana and other drugs, contact Talbot Partnership at 410-819-8067 or info@talbotpartnership.org. Please also visit our website at www.talbotpartnership.org or find us on Facebook.