Pubdate: Tue, 06 Oct 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Karen Kaplan

DUI WARNING SIGN AT AGE 12

A Study Says Kids With Warm Views of Pot Are More Likely to Drive 
Drunk or High Later.

A new study of Los Angeles-area kids suggests a specific way to 
reduce the risk that they will drive under the influence of alcohol 
or drugs as teenagers: Challenge their positive beliefs about 
marijuana, and start doing it as early as sixth grade.

Why? Compared with 12-year-olds who had negative views of marijuana, 
12-year-olds who believed marijuana could help them relax or was 
otherwise beneficial were significantly more likely to drive under 
the influence when they were 16. They were also significantly more 
likely to ride with someone else who was buzzed, drunk or high behind 
the wheel, according to the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

"Youth view marijuana use as less dangerous than drinking," the study 
authors wrote. "We must begin to address how changing views of 
marijuana might increase risk for not only marijuana use, but other behaviors."

Driving under the influence is common among American teenagers. The 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 10% of high 
schoolers do so in any given month, and that more than 20% have been 
passengers of someone driving under the influence.

So researchers from Rand Corp. in Santa Monica and Arlington, Va., 
went looking for risk factors in middle school that could predict 
these dangerous behaviors in high school. They turned to data from a 
substance use prevention program called CHOICE that was tested in 16 
middle schools in greater Los Angeles. (As an aside, they noted that 
the CHOICE program did not have any lasting benefits.)

The Rand researchers focused on 1,124 students who completed detailed 
surveys in 2009, when their average age was 12.2; 2011, when their 
average age was 14.3; and 2013, when their average age was 16.3 and 
88% were eligible to drive in California. The majority of these 
students, 57%, were girls, and half were Latino.

Using statistical models to control for the students' age, gender, 
race and ethnicity, school and whether their mothers had graduated 
from high school, the researchers identified several factors that 
seemed to predict unsafe driving at age 16.

Those who had warmer, fuzzier ideas about marijuana when they were 12 
(in sixth or seventh grade) were 63% more likely than their peers to 
admit either driving under the influence or riding with someone who 
was under the influence, according to the study.

In addition, 12-year-olds who felt most confident that they could 
resist marijuana use wound up being 89% more likely to mix alcohol 
and drugs with cars, motorcycles or other vehicles. This finding 
surprised the researchers, they wrote.

By the time the students were 14, some of the risk factors had 
changed. Those who said they had used alcohol in the last month were 
more than twice as likely as their peers to drive under the influence 
or ride with an intoxicated driver two years later.

Also, those whose friends used marijuana were 2.4 times as likely to 
be involved in unsafe driving later, and those whose family members 
used marijuana were 54% more likely to do the same.

And positive beliefs about marijuana still mattered: 14year-olds who 
had them were still 67% more likely to mix alcohol, drugs and motor 
vehicles at age 16.

The researchers noted that marijuana has taken on a benign image 
among middle schoolers. "As medical and recreational marijuana 
legalization increases in our country, adolescents are becoming more 
accepting of marijuana use," they wrote. "This highlights the need to 
address these types of beliefs as early as sixth grade."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom