Penn State Researchers Uncover New Trends In Teenage Drug Use

Using a groundbreaking new methodology, Penn State researchers have reached new conclusions about the relationships between different substances used by high school seniors.

It’s no secret in the scientific community that marijuana use among teenagers has been on the rise for several years, but Penn State professor Stephanie Lanza and a team of researchers have now been able to analyze how that increase relates to alcohol and cigarette use.

“Certainly these data have been analyzed before, but we wanted to focus on the relationships between different substances, rather than focus on one substance at a time,” says John Dziak, a researcher with the Penn State Methodology Center.

“It’s like asking, ‘if you use cigarettes, what are the odds you’re also going to use marijuana,’ but that assumes that relationship is a universal constant. Our approach is to say that relationship is changing over time.”

The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, shows an overall decrease in alcohol use, cigarette smoking and heavy episodic drinking among adolescents since 1975. However, marijuana use is increasing for the first time since the mid-90s, and race appears to be a major factor.

“I think it’s pretty dramatic that the rate of marijuana use among black youth is rapidly approaching the rate of alcohol use in the same population,” Lanza says. “That’s never been seen before in the 30 years that this data has been collected.”

According to data collected through the federal government’s annual Monitoring the Future survey, almost 30 percent of black youth reported either smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol in the past 30 days. In 2005, only slightly more than 15 percent of black youth reported smoking marijuana, while alcohol use hovered just about 30 percent.

By comparison, a little less than 25 percent of white youth currently report smoking marijuana within the past 30 days, but more than 40 percent report drinking alcohol. In 2005, only about 20 percent reported smoking marijuana, but alcohol use was closer to 50 percent.

“Race is particularly important here because our results suggest growing health disparities,” Lanza says. “The negative health consequences of smoking marijuana are going to be seen disproportionately more often among black youth, and I think that suggests at population level that we’re going to see more poor health outcomes among the African American population than among whites.”

When looking at both black and white youth together, another trend emerges. Marijuana use coupled with cigarettes and/or heavy episodic drinking has steadily decreased since 2000, but marijuana use without the use of other substances has steadily increased since 2005.

Lanza believes a combination of factors may be at play behind this trend. Cigarette use has been the subject of many public health awareness campaigns, which likely contribute to the decrease in cigarette use. However, the public perception and legal status of marijuana has begun shifting in recent years, which may lead some youth to consider it a safer alternative to cigarettes or other drugs.

Although they just finished work on this study, Lanza and her team have already started researching to dig deeper in the trends they’ve uncovered.

“If we want to prevent this escalation from continuing, we need to better understand why youth are using marijuana at these increasing rates,” Lanza says.

“We’re already working on the next step and investigating individual level factors. Our new methods allows us to really uncover how attitudes toward substances among youth, and the role of those attitudes, are shifting over time.”