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.¹ And more than one out of twenty (5.8 percent) students in grades 9-12 smoke marijuana on school property.²

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.³
• Lifetime marijuana use increases more than sevenfold between the ages of 12 and 14 (from 2 percent to 15 percent).⁴
• The percentage of kids who have tried drugs doubles between 8 ^th and 10 ^th grade, from 18 percent to 36 percent. ⁵ During this same grade transition, disapproval of marijuana use declines significantly between 8^th and 10^th 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.⁶

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.⁷
• Over three quarters (79 percent) of past-year marijuana users aged 12 to 17 obtained their most recently used marijuana from a friend.⁸
• Almost 14 percent of youths who bought marijuana did so on school property.⁹
• 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.¹⁰
• Fifty-five percent of youth aged 12 to 17 reported that marijuana is fairly or very easy to obtain.¹¹

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.¹²
• 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."¹³
• 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.¹⁴
• Some frequent, long-term marijuana users show signs of a lack of motivation(amotivational syndrome). Their problems include not caring about what happens in their lives and a lack of concern about how they look. As a result these symptoms, some users tend to perform poorly in school or at work.
• Teens who use marijuana are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school than those who don’t.¹⁵

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.¹⁶
• 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.¹⁷
• 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. ¹⁸
• 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. ¹⁹
• 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.²⁰

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.²¹
• 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.²²

REFERENCES

¹National Survey on Drug Use and Health, SAMHSA, 2002.
²Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, Centers for Disease Control, 2001.
³National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, SAMHSA, 2000.
⁴National Survey on Drug Use and Health, SAMHSA, 2002.
⁵Monitoring the Future, University of Michigan, 2003.
⁶The National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents, National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
⁷Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, PDFA, 2003.
⁸The NSDUH Report, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2004.
⁹Ibid.
¹⁰The National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VIII: Teens and Parents, National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
¹¹National Survey on Drug Use and Health, SAMHSA, 2002.
¹²Youth NIDA InfoFax Marijuana 13551. Pope, HG and Yurelun-Todd, D. The residual cognitive effects of heavy marijuana use in college students. Journal of the American Medical Association. 275(7): 521-527, 1996. Block, RI and Ghoneim, MM. Effects of chronic marijuana use on human cognition. Psychopharmacology 100(12):219-228, 1993.
¹³The NHSDA Report: Marijuana use among youths. SAMHSA, 2002. Based on data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse 2000.
¹⁴Analyses of Substance Abuse and Treatment Needs Issues Analytic Series. Office of Applied Studies, SAMHSA, 1998.
¹⁵Bray JW, Zarkin GA, Ringwalt C, Qi J. The Relationship Between Marijuana Initiation and Dropping Out of High School. Research Triangle Institute. Health Econ. 2000 Jan;9(1):9-18.
¹⁶Metzler, Rusby, & Biglan in 1999. Community Builders for Success: Monitoring After-School Activities. Oregon Research Institute, Eugene.
¹⁷National Survey on Drug Use and Health, SAMHSA, 2002.
¹⁸Ibid.
¹⁹CASA, Columbia University, National Survey of Teens, 2001.
²⁰SAMHSA, the NSDUH Report, Participation in Youth Activities and Substance Use Among Youths, August 2004.
²¹PDFA, Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, 2002.
²²PDFA, Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, 2003.