cannabisnews.com: Drug Survey: Arizona Teens Are Going To Pot!





Drug Survey: Arizona Teens Are Going To Pot!
Posted by FoM on August 19, 1999 at 13:30:40 PT
Nation
Source: USA Today
PHOENIX (AP) - For Scott Gwin, drugs are a part of everyday life. ''Weed, coke, speed. Most of my friends do it,'' the 15-year-old Central High School student said.
Gwin insists it's easy for teens in Phoenix to get drugs at school, around the corner, anywhere - and a new government survey suggests they do. Illicit drug use among Arizona teen-agers has dropped 3% since 1997, but remains significantly higher than use among their peers nationwide, according to a survey released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The portion of Arizonans ages 12 to 17 who last year said they have used drugs was nearly 24 percent, the study found - the worst figure in the country and far above the national average of 16.4 percent. And no state had more teens smoking cigarettes last year, with 20.9% saying they'd had a drag within the previous month. The U.S. average is 18.2 percent. ''I smoke cigarettes to get away from my problems,'' said Lilly Rhianna, a 14-year-old student whose mother took her cigarettes away this week. Experts said easy access to drugs and family problems were to blame for the state's poor showing. Teens at Central High seemed to agree. ''If they don't start young, they catch on during high school,'' said Norman Harley, 16. ''They see others doing it, or their moms and pops or friends. It's just something to get into.'' Overall drug use among Americans of all ages remained level last year, but use among young adults continued its steady rise, according to the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which included answers from 25,500 people ages 12 and up. All told, 78 million Americans have tried illegal drugs, the survey said. Marijuana remained the most popular drug, but 41.3 million Americans also have tried heroin, cocaine or some other illegal drug. Of them, 13.6 million were current users - about 6.2% of all Americans and half what it was at its 1979 peak. The survey also measures alcohol consumption, which was steady last year, and cigarette smoking, which fell to its lowest level since 1971 when the survey began. Last year, 27.7% of Americans smoked, with teen smoking unchanged and smoking among young adults continuing to rise. Cigar smoking edged up. The survey - carefully watched as a gauge of illicit drug use among teens - also found 9.9% of 12- to 17-year-olds had used some sort of drugs within the past month. Residents of California and Arizona were oversampled to study effects of voter initiatives to legalize some illicit drugs for medical use. Arizona Gov. Jane Dee Hull's office had not seen the report and declined comment. Some 11.5% of Arizona teens reported they were current marijuana users, compared with 7.4% in California and 8.3% in the rest of the country. The survey also found that while overall teen drug use has dropped in Arizona since 1997, the number of current cocaine users ages 12 to 17 increased from 1.9% to 2.3 percent. Terri Leveton, director of chemical dependency treatment at Samaritan Behavior Health Services in Scottsdale, said she's not surprised. ''Crack is the most prevalent because it's easily accessible and it's relatively cheap,'' Leveton said. ''It's easy to make and there's a whole system of dealers in place in Arizona.'' Leveton said the high percentage of teen drug use also indicates a much larger problem in Arizona: family problems. ''There's definitely correlations between substance abuse and family crisis,'' Leveton said. ''With Arizona having the highest statistics of child abuse, it just makes sense to me that we'd have the highest number of children who are self-medicating at an early age, especially when they see it in their home.''08/19/99- Updated 02:47 PM ETŠ Copyright 1999 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. 
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