More Students Smoke Pot, Not Cigarettes
Mother Jones reports:
In the past month, 21 percent of high school seniors smoked pot, while just 19 percent lit up a cigarette. That's according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) annual Monitoring the Future survey, released yesterday. The em>LA Times reports<that it's the first time this has happened since 1981.
But while the Times called the findings a "victory for public health campaigns aimed at stamping out cigarette smoking among teens," don't expect the FDA to adopt a pot leaf for any of its proposed anti-cigarette warning labels. The survey, which also questioned 8th and 10th graders about their illicit drug habits, noted a "significant" rise in daily marijuana use across all three grades.
In a press release, NIDA director Nora Volkow said the developing brains of pot-smoking teens placed them at "particular risk... Not only does marijuana affect learning, judgment, and motor skills, but research tells us that about 1 in 6 people who start using it as adolescents become addicted."
Obama drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, in the same press release, called the survey's findings "disappointing." He made an apparent reference to Prop 19—California's failed ballot initiative to legalize weed—saying, "Mixed messages about drug legalization, particularly marijuana, may be to blame."
