CASA Report on “Problem Parents” and Teen Drug Use
Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 1:51 pm | By: Radical Russ
The Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse, or CASA, has released a new report entitled “National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XIII: Teens and Parents”. The group, headed by Joseph Califano, focused this year on “Problem Parents”:
This year’s survey uncovered “problem parents,” who increase the likelihood that their 12- to 17- year olds will smoke, drink, get drunk and use illegal and prescription drugs, because of their failure to:
- Monitor their children’s leaving their home and hanging out on school nights (Monday through Thursday).
- Safeguard their dangerous and addictive prescription drugs, like painkillers and stimulants, from their children.
- Address the problem of drugs in their children’s school.
- Set good examples.
The report notes that 46% of 12-to-17-year-olds report going out of the home on “school nights”, but that only 14% of parents think their teens are going out on school nights.
Perhaps we need to revive the old public service announcement that used to run on television, “It’s 10:00 p.m., do you know where your child is?”
The report also notes that 1/3rd of teens are getting prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin by stealing it from their parents’ medicine. But much of the report focuses on the easy availability of marijuana for today’s teens:
One-quarter of teens know a parent of a classmate or friend who uses marijuana; 10 percent of teens say this parent smokes marijuana with people the teen’s age.
This year’s survey finds marijuana more available than ever, with 23 percent of teens able to get the drug in an hour or less, and 42 percent of teens able to get it in a day or less. It reveals a 35 percent increase over last year in teens who can get marijuana in an hour or less, and a 14 percent increase over last year in teens who can get the drug in a day or less.
More than two-thirds of the oldest teens we surveyed (17-year olds) can get marijuana in a day or less.
In contrast to the success of the public health campaign about the dangers of smoking cigarettes, we have not been as successful in the effort to curb marijuana use.
Maybe that’s because we (a) card kids who try to buy smokes, (b) smokes are legal and thus have no black market profit potential, and (c) the health warnings we give on smokes are actually accurate and meaningful to kids.
For years, CASA has been asking teens: “Which is easiest for someone your age to buy: cigarettes, beer, marijuana, or prescription drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet, Vicodin or Ritalin, without a prescription?”
Over the years, teens have indicated that cigarettes and marijuana are easiest to buy, followed by beer and then prescription drugs.
For the first time this year, more teens told us that prescription drugs are easier to buy than beer.
Much of this can be traced to two phenomena: the rise of internet-based pharmacies that evade much of the controls we place on prescriptions and the increase in over-prescribing of drugs (particularly Ritalin) that provides a ready supply.
Again, I’d note that kids consistently find cigarettes and marijuana easier to get than beer. Cigarettes we could pin on an 18-year-old age limit and many older teens having 18-year-old friends. But that 21-year-old limit does seem to make it harder for kids to get. Why not use that same system for marijuana?
