Loading ...Availability of Marijuana
Marijuana is easily concealed, and sells for as low as $5 per dose. Since 1975 nearly every high school senior surveyed by the M.T.F. study indicated that they could “very easily” or “fairly easily” obtain marijuana if they wanted it. In over thirty years of research, the lowest number of seniors reporting such ease of access, was 83%. In some years it has been as high as 90%. In 2008, 67% of tenth graders and 39% of eighth graders reported that marijuana was readily accessible to them.
The 2008 “Back to School Survey”, conducted by Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, corroborated that over two-thirds of the nation’s 17 year-olds believed that they could obtain marijuana in a day or less. Half of the 16 year olds surveyed claimed that more of their friends smoked marijuana, than smoked cigarettes. According to these respected studies, marijuana is as easy, or easier, for teens to get than is tobacco or alcohol.
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Sources: For over thirty years, a comprehensive annual study of teenage drug use patterns has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Conducted independently by the Michigan University Institute for Social Research, nearly 50,000 students are anonymously surveyed every 12 months. Each year, the data and conclusions are published in a report titled “Monitoring the Future” or “MTF” for short. The overview alone of this informative report is some 80 pages long. From it, some key findings have been gleamed about teen substance abuse. Click here to learn more.
The “Back to School Survey” has been conducted for fifteen years, and deliberately targets areas that the MTF does not address directly. The annual BTS survey includes teens and their parents. Each year they include a representative population of approximately 1,000 teens and 500 parents in their study. The BTS findings have been very helpful in exploring the relationship between parent conduct, and its effect on teen substance abuse.
