Drug Addiction is a serious problem among all the age groups, in particular among teens. The latest statistics released by NIDA’s Monitoring the Future Survey shows increasing number of teens getting addicted as well as affected due to marijuana abuse.
According to the report ,the percentage of eight graders who used an illicit drug increased from 14.5% in the last year to 16%percent, with a daily marijuana use going up in all grades. Again many eighth graders are trying to follow many means of marijuana use and on the other hand students from all the grades are consuming marijuana on a daily basis.
In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the past 30 days. On a whole 6.1 percent of high school seniors, 3.3 percent of 10th graders, and 1.2 percent of eighth graders are abusing marijuana.
Along with the statistics on consumption, MTF also found the future abusing attitudes of the teens basing on the data collected. It also included perceived harmfulness, perceived availability and disapproval of smoking marijuana. The perception that the regular marijuana smoking is harmful decreased for 10th graders from 59.5 % in 2009 to 57.2 % in 2010, and in 12th graders it dropped from 52.4% to 46.8%. In case of eight graders, disapproval of smoking marijuana decreased significantly.
These stats show the increased abuse of marijuana among the younger ones. Many studies say that the child tendency of experimenting unknown things tend them to involve in such kind of activities and the parents are required to take care of them and help them to stay away from unhealthy habits.