Pubdate: Wed, 19 May 2004 Source: Montreal Gazette (CN QU) Copyright: 2004 The Gazette, a division of Southam Inc. Contact: http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/274 Author: Sarah Schmidt, CanWest News Service Cited: http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040518/d040518b.htm YOUNG TEENS TRYING BOOZE AND DRUGS Problem Parenting and Peers' Behaviour Are Major Factors The odds of adolescents getting drunk and using drugs are relatively high if they see their parents as constantly nagging them, Statistics Canada's first national study of alcohol and drug use among 12- to 15-year-olds shows. Nearly half of the adolescents surveyed reported they'd had at least one drink. Nearly a quarter admitted they'd been drunk at least once. One in five confessed to having smoked marijuana. The younger adolescents were not asked about hallucinogens - including mushrooms, ecstasy and LSD - but 11 per cent of teens age 14 and 15 reported having tried them. The average age at which respondents said they had their first drink was 12.4. The average age at which they first got drunk was 13.2. The average age for first-time marijuana use was 13.1. And the average age for first experimenting with hallucinogens was 13.8. "Experimenting with alcohol and drugs in adolescence is fairly common," said co-author Dave Haans of Statistics Canada's research data centre at the University of Toronto. "One of the other ways at looking at our figures is the majority of adolescents in our survey engaged in no substance use. It's a matter of seeing the glass half full or half empty." The study found that the behaviour of an adolescent's peers was the strongest factor in whether he or she drank or tried drugs. But it also found that hostile parenting styles - characterized by nagging, inconsistent enforcement of rules, threats and anger - have an impact. Only young people whose parents had a negative or hostile parenting style were found to have significantly high odds of drinking to intoxication or drug use. The odds of being drunk and engaging in drug use increased by a factor of about 1.1 for every point increase in the study's hostile-parenting scale. But the study cautions against drawing any conclusions about cause and effect. "The causal direction of the relationship between hostile parenting and substance use cannot be inferred," it says. "It is possible that the parents' way of dealing with the adolescent may have changed following problem behaviours such as alcohol or drug use." The researchers also could not explain why the odds of using drugs were nearly double for young adolescents in stepparent families compared with those in traditional two-parent families. "We didn't find the same relationship about alcohol use. We're not entirely certain as to why that may be the case," Haans said. The survey bucked a trend found in other studies that suggest high-risk behaviours might occur when young people feel stressed and seek comfort, relief, or escape through drug use. When other influences in the teens' lives were considered, the Statistics Canada researchers did not find a relationship between drug use and emotional problems. And the study found that the odds of being drunk in the past year were lower for adolescents reporting emotional problems. There was little difference between the usage patterns of kids living in rural and urban settings, a fact that surprised lead author Tina Hotton. "I think that there's a myth that drug use is an urban problem," she said. Hotton was also surprised that there didn't appear to be a gender gap. Girls were as likely to experiment as boys. But David Wolfe, a specialist in child psychology and child abuse at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, found no surprise there. While girls once lagged behind boys in illicit behaviours such as drug use and smoking, that's no longer the case, he said: "Girls are clearly catching up." The data were collected in 1998-99 as part of a national long-term survey of children and teens. [sidebar] *What the Teens Said 42% of 12- to 15-year-olds reported that they had consumed at least one drink of alcohol - a bottle of beer or wine cooler, or a glass of wine - at some point in their lives. By age 15, the figure was 66%. 22% (more than one-fifth) said they had been drunk at least once. Among 15-year-olds, 44% said they had been drunk. 19% (about one-fifth) of 12- to 15-year-olds reported having smoked marijuana. Among 15-year-olds, the figure rose to 38%. 12.4 years old was the average age at which adolescents reported having their first drink (with only a slight difference between boys and girls). The average age of being drunk for the first time was just over 13 years. Glue-sniffing began at an average age of just over 12 years. For other drugs, including marijuana and hallucinogens, the average age of first-time use was between 13.1 and 13.8. The study was based on data from 4,296 adolescent respondents age 12 to 15 who participated in the 1998-99 National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Source - Statistics Canada - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake