Pubdate: Thu, 20 Dec 2012
Source: USA Today (US)
Copyright: 2012 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/625HdBMl
Website: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Donna Leinwand Leger

1 IN 15 12TH-GRADERS SMOKE POT DAILY

As states increasingly adopt laws allowing medical marijuana, fewer
teens see occasional marijuana use as harmful, the largest national
survey of youth drug use has found.

Nearly 80% of high school seniors don't consider occasional marijuana
use harmful -- the highest rate since 1983 -- and one in 15 smoke
nearly every day, according to the annual survey of eighth-, 10th- and
12th-graders made public Wednesday.

More than one in five high school seniors said they smoked marijuana
in the month before the survey, and 36% did during the previous year,
according to Monitoring the Future's survey of 45,449 students from
395 public and private schools.

After four years of increasing marijuana use by teens, annual use
among 10th- and 12th-graders stabilized and use among eighth-graders
declined slightly since 2010.

"Whether this is more than a pause in the ongoing increase that we
have seen in teen marijuana use in recent years is unclear," principal
investigator Lloyd Johnston said.

Teens' growing belief that marijuana is not harmful suggests its use
will increase, he said.

State laws that allow marijuana for medical use contribute to teen
perceptions that marijuana is not a harmful drug, said Nora Volkow,
director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on
Drug Abuse, which sponsors the study.

When teens perceive drugs as safe, drug use generally increases,
Volkow said.

Among eighth-graders, more than 50% don't see the harm of occasional
marijuana use while 42% consider occasional use harmful -- the lowest
rate since the survey began tracking risk perception for this age
group in 1991.

A study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences found that heavy marijuana use beginning as a teen and
stretching into adulthood causes an average drop of 8 points in IQ
scores.

"That's a very robust indication that (smoking marijuana) may have
long-term effects," Volkow said.

Among 12th-graders, 11% said they had used synthetic marijuana known
as K2 or Spice -- about the same as last year, the first year the
survey asked about it. Aside from alcohol and tobacco, synthetic
marijuana is the second-most widely-used drug among 10th- and
12th-graders after marijuana. The federal government recently banned
the drugs.

"I think that's the bad news in the survey: the significant increases
in the regular use of marijuana," Volkow said. "It's not just the
occasional use. You have a very high rate of daily use. That's really
a huge number."

Teens' perceptions of harm from marijuana are becoming more consistent
with science, said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug
Policy Alliance, which advocates decriminalization of drug use.

"Kids know the dangers of cigarettes. They have a growing wariness
about prescription drugs. They are aware that daily marijuana use is a
very bad idea," Nadelmann said. "But they are also aware that
occasional use is not much of a problem."

Use of other illegal drugs continued to show a slow but steady
decline. Past-year use of all illegal drugs except for marijuana is at
its lowest point since 1997, the survey found.

"These long-term declines in youth drug use in America are proof that
positive social change is possible," White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske said.
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