MARIJUANA & KIDS:
BACK-TO-SCHOOL FACT SHEET

Parents: Do Your Homework for a Drug-Free School Year

Going back to school signifies a time of new beginnings - new schools, classes, and friends. It can also be a time of new challenges for many young people when it comes to drugs. Every day, approximately 4,700 American youth ages 12-17 try marijuana for the first time. And more than one out of twenty (5.4 percent) students in grades 9-12 smoke marijuana on school property.

The transition from middle to high school is a particularly risky time for teens, putting them at an increased risk for drug use.

• The most dramatic increase in first-time marijuana use occurs between the ages of 12 and 13, the time of transition from middle school to high school, and continues to climb significantly, peaking at age 15 before leveling off.
• Lifetime marijuana use increases more than sevenfold between the ages of 12 and 14 (from 2 percent to 15 percent).
• The percentage of kids who have tried drugs doubles between 8th and 10th grade, from 18 percent to 36 percent. 5 During this same grade transition, disapproval of marijuana use declines significantly between 8th and 10th grade from 82 to 68 percent.
• Highly stressed teens are twice as likely as teens with a low level of stress to smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal drugs. Nearly one in three girls and one in four boys report being highly stressed.

Parents tend to overestimate their child's anti-drug attitudes and underestimate their exposure to drugs and actual drug use, mistakenly believing their child is not at risk.

• Research shows that nearly two-thirds of teens have close friends who use marijuana. Over three quarters (79 percent) of past-year marijuana users aged 12 to 17 obtained their most recently used marijuana from a friend.
• Almost 14 percent of youths who bought marijuana did so on school property.
• Between the ages of 12 and 17, the likelihood that a teen will smoke, drink or use illegal drugs increases more than seven times and the percentage of teens with close friends who use marijuana jumps 14 times.
• Fifty-five percent of youth aged 12 to 17 reported that marijuana is fairly or very easy to obtain.

Marijuana leads to a host of health, social and behavioral problems at a crucial time in kids' lives, when their bodies and brains are still developing. Marijuana use impairs learning and decreases motivation during kids' peak learning years.

• Heavy marijuana use impairs the ability of young people to concentrate and retain information. This is especially problematic when their brains are still developing.
• Research found that youths with an average grade of "D" or below were more than four times as likely to have used marijuana in the past year as youths who reported an average grade of "A."
• Students who have smoked marijuana within the past year are more than twice as likely to cut class than those who did not smoke, while health problems associated with using marijuana can keep students from attending school due to illness.
• Heavy marijuana users can develop an "a motivational syndrome," which is characterized by decreased drive and ambition, shortened attention span, poor judgment, high distractibility, impaired communication skills, and diminished effectiveness in interpersonal situations.
• Teens who use marijuana are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school than those who don't.

Kids who are unsupervised and unmonitored are more likely to use drugs and alcohol.

• Youths who are not regularly monitored by their parents are four times more likely to use drugs.
• Youths whose parents always or sometimes check whether their homework was done are more than twice less likely to have used marijuana in the past month than those whose parents seldom or never check homework.
• Youths whose parents always or sometimes limit the amount of time youths spend out with friends on school nights are 30 percent less likely to have used marijuana in the past month than those whose parents don't.
• Teens whose parents monitor TV viewing, Internet usage, know where their teen is after school, and expect their teen to tell them where they are going are at half the risk of substance abuse as teens whose parents do not.
• Youths aged 12 to 17 who participate in school-based, community-based, church- or faith-based, or other activities during the past year were less likely to have used cigarettes, alcohol, or illicit drugs in the past month than youths who don't.

Parents can and do make a difference in a teen's decision to stay drug-free. They can help keep kids drug-free by closely supervising their time, staying involved in their lives, knowing who they are with and setting clear rules.

• Two-thirds of youth ages 13-17 say that upsetting their parents or losing the respect of family and friends is one of the main reasons they don't smoke marijuana or use other drugs.
• Young people who learn a lot about the risks of drugs at home are up to 50 percent less likely to try drugs than their peers who don't get drug information from their parents.