What A Teen's Day Can Be Like / Anti-Marijuana Anti-Pot Educational Video PSA. PSA Commercial from Office of National Drug Control Policy / Partnership for a Drug Free American. Public Domain Public Service Announcement.

Children and young teens start using marijuana for many reasons. Curiosity and the desire to fit into a social group are common reasons. Certainly, youngsters who have already begun to smoke cigarettes and/or use alcohol are at high risk for marijuana use. Also, research suggests that the use of alcohol and drugs by other family members plays a strong role in whether children start using drugs. Parents, grandparents, and older brothers and sisters in the home are models for children to follow. Some young people who take drugs do not get along with their parents. Some have a network of friends who use drugs and urge them to do the same (peer pressure). All aspects of a child's environment - home, school, neighborhood - help to determine whether the child will try drugs. Children who become more heavily involved with marijuana can become dependent, and that is their prime reason for using the drug. Others mention psychological coping as a reason for their use - to deal with anxiety, anger, depression, boredom, and so forth. But marijuana use is not an effective method for coping with life's problems, and staying high can be a way of simply not dealing with the problems and challenges of growing up. Researchers have found that children and teens (both male and female) who are physically and sexually abused are at greater risk than other young people of using marijuana and other drugs and of beginning drug use at an early age. Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug used by teens today. Approximately 60 percent of the kids who use drugs use only marijuana. Of the 14.6 million marijuana users in 2002, approximately 4.8 million used it on 20 or more days in any given month (Kids and Marijuana). The marijuana that is available to teens today is much stronger than the marijuana that was available in the 1960's. Sometimes it is also laced with other, more potent drugs. Marijuana is physically addictive. Each year, 100,000 teens are treated for marijuana dependence. Teens who smoke marijuana heavily experience much the same symptoms of withdrawal as users of nicotine. The University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which assesses drug and alcohol use among American youth, reported substantial increases among eighth, tenth, and twelfth graders from 1992 to 1997. These statistics show a disturbing national trend in the increase of marijuana use by teenagers. Between 1991 and 2001, the percentage of eighth graders who used marijuana doubled from one in ten to one in five. Kids are using marijuana at an earlier age. Research indicates that the earlier teens start using marijuana, the more likely they are to become dependent on this or other drugs later in life. Of teens admitted for treatment for marijuana dependence, 56 percent had first used the drug by fourteen years of age, and 26 percent had begun by twelve years of age. According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA), marijuana was the most frequently used drug of choice by teens. The NHSDA also reported that teens using marijuana on twelve or more days during the past year, 58 percent of them had one problem that they related to their marijuana use, 41 percent had two problems, and 28 percent had at least three problems that they related to their marijuana use. From age 12 to age 13, the proportion of teens who say they could buy marijuana if they wanted to more than triples, from 14 to 50 percent. Also the percentage of teens who say that they know a student at their school who sells drugs almost triples, from eight percent to 22 percent. There are many reasons why some teens start smoking marijuana. Many kids start using because their older siblings or friends are consuming it in front of them. Often peer pressure plays a major role. Teens think it's cool to use marijuana; they see their favorite movie stars smoking it in movies and their favorite bands sing songs about it. The problem becomes more severe when teens start relying on marijuana and think that they need it to escape from problems at school, home life, or with friends. Public Domain Public Service Announcement.