UPDATE, December 15, 2011: Teens are smoking pot in higher numbers for the 4th year straight, according to the annual Monitoring the Future Survey study by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, reports Tim Martin of the Associated Press.
The results of the survey, based on 47,000 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, found:
One of every 15 high school seniors reported smoking pot on a daily or near daily basis, the highest rate since 1981; at the same time alcohol and cigarette use among the same age group has dipped to historic lows.
One of every nine high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana, sometimes called Spice or K2, within the previous 12 months. This is the first time synthetic marijuana has been included in the survey.
(Fake marijuana, sometimes sold in drug paraphernalia shops and on the Internet as incense, contains organic leaves coated with chemicals that provide a marijuana-like high when smoked).
Ah, be careful what you wish for. Cigarette smoking will kill you -- that's taught in every first-grade class ("Mommy! Miss Kimball says you'll die if you smoke!") ... and the kids got the message. So....
Melissa Healy, reporting in today's Los Angeles Times, says that "after a decade in decline," pot is back.
"For the first time since 1981, high school seniors reporting they had smoked marijuana in the last 30 days outnumbered those who said they smoked cigarettes...one in three high school seniors says they've smoked pot in the last year and one in four 10th-graders smoked pot last year." From the article (emphases ours):
The National Institute on Drug Abuse on Tuesday issued its 2010 "Monitoring the Future" survey--a yearly look at kids' drug and tobacco use patterns and attitudes. The remarkable crossover of the lines for marijuana use and tobacco use is a victory for public-health campaigns aimed at stamping out cigarette smoking among teens. But the federal office that tracks illicit drug use said it is driven by an uptick in youth marijuana use that is broad-based and likely to continue.
In 2010, 21.4% of high school seniors said they had smoked pot in the month before, while 19.2% reported they were cigarette smokers. Twelfth graders who acknowledged the daily use of marijuana reached its highest point since the early 1980s, 6.1%, and the numbers of eighth- and 10th-graders smoking pot daily (1% and 3%, respectively) also rose in 2010 over the previous year. Those students' attitudes about the risks of marijuana use have shown steady softening in recent years, suggesting to researchers that as eighth- and 10th-graders advance toward graduation, rates of pot-smoking will continue to climb....
Attitudes toward the use of the club-drug Ecstasy also softened among eighth- and 10th-graders, as did use. Researchers called the increase an example of "generational forgetting," in which a lull in use is followed by an uptick in use by younger people who were not exposed to anti-drug messages.
Seniors were a little less likely this year than last to report they had abused the prescription pain medication Vicodin (8% had done so in the previous year, vs. 9.7% in 2009), although illicit use of the opioid painkiller OxyContin held steady, and was up among 10th-graders. Twelfth-graders continued the nonmedical use of drugs prescribed for attention deficit disorder--about 6.5% acknowledged taking them in the last year, and roughly the same number used amphetamines.
A great beginning to a fresh new generation of educated and will-driven young scientists and explorers to make the world a better place tomorrow. Or maybe just a bunch of potheads.
Posted by: sleep | 01/21/2011 at 08:23 PM