KIDS OF NAGGING PARENTS DRINK MORE

OTTAWA -- The odds of adolescents getting drunk and using drugs are
relatively high if they see their parents as constantly nagging them,
Statistics Canada's first national study of alcohol and drug use among
12- to 15-year-olds shows.

The survey of 4,296 young people, released Tuesday, found four in 10
had consumed one alcoholic drink at least once and more than one in
five (22 per cent) had been drunk.

About one-fifth (or 19 per cent) also reported having smoked
marijuana.

The younger adolescents were not asked about hallucinogens --
including mushrooms, ecstasy and LSD -- but 11 per cent of teens aged
14 and 15 reported having tried them.

The average age at which they had reported their first drink was 12.4
years, and they first got drunk on average at 13.2 years of age.

The average age for first-time marijuana use was slightly younger, at
13.1, and for experimenting with hallucinogens slightly older, at 13.8.

"Statistically, we wouldn't characterize it as common or an epidemic,"
said co-author Dave Haans of Statistics Canada's Research Data Centre
at the University of Toronto.

"Experimenting with alcohol and drugs in adolescence is fairly
common.

"One of the other ways at looking at our figures is the majority of
adolescents in our survey engaged in no substance use.

"It's a matter of seeing the glass half full or half
empty."

The survey found that the peer group emerged as the strongest risk
factor, with alcohol and drug use more likely when their friends also
drank or tried drugs. But the study also found hostile parenting
styles -- characterized by nagging, inconsistent enforcement of rules,
threats and anger -- have an impact on teen behaviour.

After asking the young teens several questions about their
relationship with their parents, the researchers considered three
aspects: hostile parenting, parental monitoring and parent-child cohesion.

Only young people whose parents had a negative or hostile parenting
style were found to have significantly high odds of drinking to
intoxication or drug use. The odds of being drunk and engaging in drug
use increased by a factor of about 1.1 for every point increase in the
hostile parenting scale.

But the study cautions against drawing any conclusions about cause and
effect.

"The causal direction of the relationship between hostile parenting
and substance use cannot be inferred, however. It is possible that the
parents' way of dealing with the adolescent may have changed following
problem behaviours such as alcohol or drug use," the report states.

The researchers also can't explain why the odds of using drugs were
nearly double for young adolescents in step-parent families compared
with those in traditional two-parent families.

"We didn't find the same relationship about alcohol use. We're not
entirely certain as to why that may be the case," said Haans.

The survey also bucked a trend found in other studies that suggest
high-risk behaviours may occur when youth feel stressed and seek
comfort, relief, or escape through drug use.