Teens and Drugs: The Danger of Generational Forgetting

OK, I may have jumped the gun on the dangers of the new drug salvia. After talking to a couple of drug experts, I don't think salvia is necessarily the next marijuana although it seems to be getting some hype in the media. So, that's the good news.

And there's also good news in a recent study that found drug use by teens is much lower than a decade ago. Lloyd Johnston, one of the lead researchers in an annual study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, www.monitoringthefuture.org, said that drug use has decreased since the 1990s because teens learned of the dangers of alcohol, marijuana and harder drugs like LSD and heroin.

The study found that alcohol is the biggest problem for teens, with nearly a third of all eighth graders and two-thirds of all twelfth graders reporting drinking over the past year and nearly 13 percent of all eighth graders, 24 percent of all tenth graders and 46 percent of all twelfth graders saying they had gotten drunk over the past year.

Marijuana is also a big drug of choice for teens with 10 percent of eighth graders, nearly 25 percent of tenth graders and  nearly 32 percent of twelfth graders reporting smoking marijuana last year.

The numbers are much lower for harder drugs like heroin, LSD and ecstasy but those numbers could spike up again as teens no longer perceive those drugs as dangerous and the study found fewer eighth graders view harder drugs as dangerous.  

"It's a phenomenon I call generational forgetting," says Johnston. "They have to learn the lessons all over again. They learn the lessons from parents or drug campaigns or school education programs or they can find out firsthand why it's dangerous."

The solution is obvious: Talk to your kids and make sure you're giving them good information. Don't let this generation forget.