TEENS' USE OF MARIJUANA RISES; FEWER SEE IT AS DANGEROUS

Marijuana use among young people rose this year to the highest it has
been in nearly a decade, while teens' perceptions of the drug's
dangers dropped.

By some measurements, such as use in the past 30 days, marijuana is
more popular than cigarettes among all ages of teens, expanding a
trend first seen in the past couple of years.

The figures were released Tuesday as part of the annual Monitoring the
Future study. Drug-abuse-prevention officials said the national
interest in medical marijuana may be to blame for the upward tick in
teen usage. Fifteen states, including Colorado, and the District of
Columbia have laws legalizing medical marijuana.

"We should examine the extent to which the debate over medical
marijuana and marijuana legalization for adults is affecting teens'
perceptions of risk," Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, said in a statement.

Nationwide, 21.4 percent of 12th-graders, 16.7 percent of 10th-graders
and 8 percent of eighth-graders reported having used marijuana in the
past 30 days. Each of those figures was higher than the number who
reported smoking cigarettes in the past 30 days - 19.2 percent, 13.6
percent and 7.1 percent, respectively. Daily use of marijuana remained
below daily smoking of cigarettes.

While teen tobacco smoking has declined over the past 10 years,
marijuana use is as high as it has been since the early part of the
decade. Marijuana use still remains well below where it was in the
late 1970s, though.

The study, a project of the University of Michigan, is funded by the
National Institutes of Health.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a consistent critic of the
state's medical-marijuana system, expressed alarm at the numbers.

"Marijuana use can have grave detrimental effects on the developing
minds and behavior of teens," he said in a statement. "This report
highlights one of the side effects of the increasing social acceptance
of medical marijuana and the ramifications of its widespread use."

But marijuana advocates took a different tack.

Mason Tvert, the executive director of the pro-marijuana group SAFER,
noted that teen alcohol use dropped. General alcohol use still
remained more prevalent than marijuana use.

"We would all like teens to remain drug-free," Tvert said. "But if
they are going to use an intoxicating substance, they pose far less
harm to themselves and to others if they choose to use marijuana
instead of alcohol."

Indeed, drug-abuse-prevention experts said a decline in teens'
perception of marijuana's harm likely contributed to the rise in use.
Among 12th-graders, 24.5 percent said smoking marijuana occasionally
poses "great risk," a drop of nearly 3 percentage points from last
year. However, 62 percent of 12th-graders said they disapprove of
occasional marijuana use.