UM Study: Teen Smoking, Pot Use Up
America's teens are smoking more -- both cigarettes and marijuana . That's according to an annual government study at the University of Michigan of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders across the country.
The Monitoring the Future study, which has been tracking teen smoking in the U.S. for the past 36 years, reports that past 30-day smoking among 8th graders increased from 6.5% in 2009 to 7.1% in 2010; among 10th graders it rose from 13.1% to 13.6%.
Peak cigarette smoking levels among teens were reached around 1996 among 8th and 10th graders and in 1997 among 12th graders. In the five or six years immediately following those peak levels, smoking among teens fell sharply. This likely was due in large part to increased public attention to the issue as well as to sharply rising prices, caused in part by new state sales taxes on cigarettes.
According to Lloyd Johnston, the study's principal investigator, smoking behavior among younger teens is particularly important because it is predictive of their smoking behavior as they become older teens and young adults.
"Smoking is a habit that tends to stay with people for a long time, leading to ongoing differences between different graduating classes of students that persist into adulthood," he said. "Scientists call it a cohort effect, and it occurs largely because cigarette smoking is so addictive."
Pot smoking has risen as well. Some 6.1 percent of high-school seniors reported using marijuana this year, up from 5.2 percent in 2009.
Marijuana use by 10th-graders climbed from 2.8 percent to 3.3 percent, and for eighth-grade students it edged up from 1.0 percent to 1.2 percent.
"These high rates of marijuana use during the teen and preteen years, when the brain continues to develop, place our young people at particular risk," said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
On the other hand, binge drinking is on the decline. While 23.2 percent of high school seniors reported having five or more drinks in a row, that's down from 25.2 percent a year earlier. The binge rate for this age group peaked at 31.5 percent in 1998.
On other topics the survey found:
• Use of ecstasy, which had declined in the early 2000s, is on the increase again.
• There was a small increase in teens injecting heroin, but only among 12th-graders.
• Use of cocaine remained low after declining from levels in the 1980s and 1990s.
The survey conducted by the UM covered 46,482 students in 396 schools.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
