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When it comes to drinking and drugs, the common teen lament “But mom…everyone else is doing it” won’t necessarily get you off the hook—true as it may be. According to the national 2002 youth survey Monitoring the Future, more than three fourths of 12th-graders and two thirds of tenth-graders have tried alcohol (and with kids, try is generally synonymous with binge). According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (niaaa.nih.gov), those who began drinking before the age of 15 were four times more likely to become adult alcoholics than those who sipped their first cocktail at 21. Also, since neural networks in the brain continue forming throughout one’s teenage years, adolescent boozehounds are at a greater risk for short- and long-term memory problems—and worse. In a 2006 National Institute on Drug Abuse survey (nida.nih.gov), 42.3 percent of 12th-graders claimed to have tried some kind of illicit drug (that includes pot, inhalants, LSD and hallucinogens) in their short lifetimes, while 9.7 percent of them claim to use prescription drugs recreationally. Yikes.
