TEENS PREFER MARIJUANA TO HEAVY DRINKING, SURVEY SHOWS

More 15-year-olds have tried marijuana than have experimented with a night
of drinking, a national survey of Canadian teens shows.

Almost half the boys and 40 per cent of girls in Grade 10 said they've
smoked marijuana, according to the 2002 survey released yesterday and
carried out by Queen's University in partnership with Health Canada. This
represents a doubling of the rate since 1990 for boys, and a 16-point
increase for girls.

It is also a reversal of the pattern in 1990, when the experience of getting
"really drunk" surpassed experimenting with marijuana.

Among 15-year-old boys in 2002, 46 per cent reported being "really drunk" at
least twice, down from 48 in 1990. Girls in Grade 10 dropped three points in
this period, to 42 per cent, according to the sweeping survey about the
health of young teens completed every four years since 1990.

Although marijuana use is on the rise, cigarette smoking has dropped off,
especially among girls. The survey found the percentage of Grade 10 girls
who smoked daily decreased to 11 per cent in 2002, from 21 per cent in 1994.

The 2002 survey also shows the percentage of young teens having sex jumped
among girls from 17 per cent in Grade 9 to 25 per cent in Grade 10, and 19
to 27 per cent among the boys. At the same time, fewer of the older students
reported using condoms.

Among the boys, condom use dropped from 73 per cent in Grade 9 to 69 per
cent in Grade 10. Sixty-eight per cent of the Grade 9 girls said their
partners wore condoms, compared with 67 per cent of Grade 10 girls.

The use of a riskier method of contraception, such as withdrawal, increased.