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March 3, 2008Drug Use Trends Affect Risk of Marijuana in Deviance Prone Boys, But Not Girls |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: When national drug use trends among adolescents go up or down, the risk of marijuana use among deviance-prone male youth also goes up or down. Among deviance-prone female youth, it does not, according to a study in the March issue of Prevention Science. The risk among deviance prone girls, however, does not change with shifts in the popularity of drug use. The study, based on data collected from 44,751 students from the 12th grade from 1979 to 2004, also showed that deviance proneness is not only related to regular, more problematic use of marijuana, but is also related to occasional use of the drug. "Parents and teachers need to be aware that historically, even those teens that use marijuana occasionally have been more likely to show antisocial or risky behavior. Also it appears that adolescents' social rejection of marijuana use has been a powerful drug-use deterrent. Therefore, to prevent drug use, we need to drive down social acceptance of marijuana use among all adolescents through a variety of media campaigns and risk-focused prevention programs. We should also combine that with drug use prevention programs targeted for deviance prone male and female teens," Little said. While previous studies have shown the relationship between a deviance-prone profile and frequency of drug use, "this is the first study to establish this relationship across 26 years of national historical data for both male and female youth," according to Little. Prevention Science is a journal of the Society for Prevention Research, an international organization focused on the advancement of science-based prevention programs and policies through empirical research.
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