'NAGGED TEENS RISK SUBSTANCE ABUSE'

Survey Also Finds 22 Per Cent Aged 12 to 15 Had Been Drunk

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
youth 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 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 data were collected in 1998/99 as part of a national long-term survey
of children and youth.