Teen Access to Drugs
A few years ago parents were shocked to discover that teens reported they had easier access to marijuana than alcohol. Sadly, the shocking news has compounded today. Not only do teens report that marijuana is as easy to obtain as cigarettes, but alcohol is now considered harder to get than prescription drugs.
Knowing this, parents need to realize that there is nothing they alone can do about teen access to drugs. The supply is there, so parents should focus on educating adolescents about the dangers involved with drug use.
Obviously, there is a market for all of these drugs or they would not be so readily available. Studies have shown that teens have a general perception that marijuana and prescription drug use comes with little risk. In order to discourage teens from using them, parents must correct that notion.
The best defense to youth drug abuse is for parents to educate themselves about overdose, drug-use causing injuries, and how adolescent drug and alcohol abuse affects brain development. Planting these seeds of wisdom makes teens think before they engage in alcohol or drug use.
The University of Maryland, College Park, has posted data from the 2009 National Survey on American’s Attitudes on Substance Abuse that details drug availability to teens. The text is below, with a link to the website for CESAR (Center for Substance Abuse Research) following. Parents can also get more information from our blog’s adolescent drug abuse category.
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Teens are equally likely to say that cigarettes or marijuana are the easiest for them to buy, according to data from the 2009 National Survey on American’s Attitudes on Substance Abuse. Slightly more than one-fourth (26%) of teens said that cigarettes were the easiest for someone their age to buy and the same percentage cited marijuana. The third most prevalent response was prescription drugs (16%), followed by beer (14%). Ten percent of teens reported that they thought all four substances were equally easy to buy. When the parents of these teens were asked which substance they thought was easier for teens their child’s age to buy, more than one-third reported cigarettes (37%), 22% reported marijuana, 12% reported beer, and only 9% reported prescription drugs (data not shown).
Tarzana Treatment Centers in Los Angeles makes a daily effort to find treatment news articles that we can share with our readers in the youth alcohol and drug treatment community. The external content was found among other articles of equal informational and educational quality.
Southern California Locations for Alcohol and Drug Treatment
Tarzana Treatment Centers has locations all over Southern California in Los Angeles County. Other than our central location in Tarzana, we have facilities in Lancaster in the Antelope Valley, Long Beach, and in Northridge and Reseda in the San Fernando Valley.