The Drug Scene
Drugs are everywhere, from the gym locker to the home medicine chest. Our drug problem involves a wide variety of uppers and downers: those that arepsychoactivp (affecting the mind), those that are legal, and those that are illegal. Researchers and clinicians say that most users, like alcoholics, do not feet that they have a drug problem, and herein lie the dangers of drug abuse. There is no single type of drug user. Drug use cuts across all economic, ethnic, and social classifications and includes the hard-to-identify secret user. The rise of illicit drug use by young people is one of society's most puzzling problems.
Parents, Peers, and Marijuana Use
A study of 8,000 New York State high school students revealed some interesting data. First, it was found that adolescents whose parents and friends used psychoactive dl ugs are most likely to use marijuana themselves. Second, peers were found to be more influential than arents in determining whether a young person will use drugs.
The adolescents studied came from eighteen high schools. In eneral, drug-using parents were found to enhance but not initiate drug use among their children. The highest rate of adolescent marijuana use detected in the study (67 percent) was found among those ose parents and peers both used drugs. Children of non-drug-using parents were less likely to take up drugs than those whose parents used drugs. Interestingly, the link between parental and adolescent :ug use has been almost exclusively limited to mothers; it is strongest when a daughter considers her mothpr a drug user. Among .olescents who reported their mothers' use of tranquilizers, cent were marijuana users, compared with 24 percent who said eir mothers did not use drugs.
The study observed that 15 percent of the students, both male :I female, whose friends say they have not smoked marijuana use it emselves, while 79 percent of those whose friends have used 2rijuana 60 times or more use the drug. The percentage of adolescents who have used maurijuana sixty times or more increases from 2 percent among those whose friends have never used marijuana to 48 percent among those whose friends are sixty-time users.
Theories about Drug Abuse
Theories of personality in drug usage focus on psychological needs. For example, one view holds that very insecure people have underlying emotional problems and conflicts that predispose them to turn to drugs. Such individuals may use heroin or other opiates to relieve anxiety, to drop out from society, or to fulfill self-destructive wishes. This is opposed to interactional theory, which stresses that one learns to use a drug as he learns any other behavior. Therefore, opportunities for a person to use drugs are generated by his or her association with users. The adolescent drug user finds support and reinforcement from friends: he or she becomes a member of an in group. One sociological theory holds that youth may turn to drugs to show their opposition to the life-styles of the establishment. Thus, large social gatherings of youth at music festivals and other happenings often involve drug usage and free sexual practices as a dual social pattern of pr test.
