Marijuana Use Growing Among Teenagers

The article I have read about teen smoking is called, “Marijuana Use Growing Among Teenagers.” This article was published on December 14, 2011. I read this article on New York Times, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/marijuana-growing-in-popularity-among-teenagers. The use of Marijuana is growing rapidly that at least one out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on a daily basis. The age group is starting to lower down to 10^th graders smoking marijuana. People are seeing that marijuana is getting more popular because of legalizing it for medical use. Apparently, medical marijuana is legal in at least 16 states, like Colorado and the District of Columbia. This is surprising to me because I didn’t think the legalization of medical marijuana would be this soon. I thought they would legalize it down the road, years later. Now they surveyed over 46,000 students who have tried marijuana, the results were about 25 percent of 8^th graders, 10^th graders, and 12^th graders have reported using marijuana. It is shocking that it goes down to 8^th graders that are using marijuana, they are barely still junior high kids that aren’t even close to being able to smoke. There is another product that is also becoming popular to teens. It is called synthetic marijuana which is a mixture of herbs and chemicals, also known as “spice” or “K2.” The reason why this is popular now is because it has been sold legally in convenience stores and gas stations. Surprisingly, the percentages of using different types of drugs are going down, such as cocaine, crack, and sedatives. I think that is good, but now they need to work on lowering the use of marijuana.

Study: Does Alcohol in Movies Drive Teens to Binge Drink?

The article I read for teenage drinking is called, “Study: Does Alcohol in Movies Drive Teens to Binge Drink?” This article was published on March 5, 2012. I got this article on the Time Magazine website, http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/05/study-does-alcohol-in-movies-drive-teens-to-binge-drink. This article talked about doing a study and figuring out whether teens are getting the idea that drinking is ok from movies. Studies suggest that when teens see drinking scenes from movies, they are more likely to binge drink. This is not definite yet, because they are not sure if that’s the whole reason behind it. Although, they have done surveys on how many times characters were shown drinking alcohol in movies. They have totaled about 86 percent out of 655 movies were showing at least one drinking scene. Then they took about 16,000 teens that were from the ages of 10 to 19 and gave them a survey on how many times they seen a movie that has at least one drinking scene. The end result, the students have at least seen more than 10,000 alcohol scenes totaled altogether. This then leads to some of them thinking that drinking is ok, that movie stars are doing it and tempts them to try it. What they are suggesting now is to have parents watch shows, movies, and talk about what they are watching with the teens, but not to the extent of having “parental controls.” I honestly think movies can play a small part of this, because some scenes just show when an adult drinks, nothing happens to them. We all know that alcohol can do much more than just what we seen on the actual screen.  

Study: More Teens Smoking Pot Than Cigarettes

The article I have read for teenage smoking is called, “Study: More Teens Smoking Pot Than Cigarettes.” This article was published on June 11, 2012. I got this article online on the Time Magazine website, http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/06/11/study-more-teens-smoking-pot-than-cigarettes. What I have read about on this article was that teens are looking more to smoking marijuana than cigarettes. The reason is because most teens are getting the message about what cigarettes can do to you and can cause lung cancer. I guess they learned from all the anti-smoking campaigns, personal experiences, and through family members that suffered from this condition.  So they think smoking marijuana will be safer because it wouldn’t cause any harm. That is not true though, what they don’t know is that marijuana has a long-term effect on learning and memory. Their minds could be damaged and wouldn’t be able to learn as well as they use to and even to remember things, events, and so forth. Marijuana contains 50-70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than tobacco does. When researchers did a survey last year, the results were that twenty-seven percent of high school students were smoking pot than cigarettes. Then eighteen percent were smoking cigarettes still, and this was out of 15,000 students in high school. This is still crazy and I think these teens still need a lot to learn about marijuana and what it could do to them because there is so much more that goes on with this type of drug also. Even though people say marijuana is some-what a stress reliever, I don’t believe it at all. All they are doing is losing their memory and learning abilities.

For Teenage Smokers, Removing the Allure of the Pack

The article I have read for teenage smoking is called, “For Teenage Smokers, Removing the Allure of the Pack.” This article was published on August 1, 2012, which was recently. I read this article online on New York Times website, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/for-teenage-smokers-removing-the-allure-of-the-pack. Basically, this article was talking about why teenagers started smoking in the first place and some ways to prevent teenagers to stop now or starting later. According to researchers, they think stopping teens from smoking will be a difficult task to do and prevent rather than stopping obesity. That’s how serious and hard it could be to stop this. The reason teens start smoking is because they think it’s “cool,” and try to impress their friends thinking they are adults acting with a reckless behavior. Last year, about 18 percent of students who were seniors were smokers in high school. This is very sad considering that these teens know what smoking can do and yet they still have the guts to do such a thing. They probably know they could get lung cancer later in their years; this could cause major problems and maybe even their life. But yet, teens don’t care about their health these days. One strategy they are trying to prevent this from happening is that they want to make smoking look uncool by changing the packages and so forth. I really think that this isn’t going to change a thing. Teenagers are still going to smoke whether they care or not, this all ties in with peer pressure too.

Teen Drinking Diaries

The article that I read for teen drinking is called “Teen Drinking Diaries.” This article was published on June 25, 2010. I found this article online on The New York Times website, http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/teenage-drinking-diaries. This type of article was kind of different and it was more about the actual teens writing about their experience with alcohol. Most of them tried it as young as 15 or so, and they talk about their situations. I thought this was pretty interesting because reading about it from a teenager who actually tried it makes it seem more realistic. I don’t know if that makes sense but you actually hear from the teenager instead of reading from research and all that stuff that researchers come up with. Basically, these teenagers are telling us that when you drink at a young age, you have no idea what’s in for you at the end. You don’t know how much to chug, drink, how many shots to take, how long you should, and the end results from it. Then that’s when you learn your lesson from your hangover. The good thing is that they never drove under the influence, which was probably the only smart thing they did. Other than that, they were curious because their parents never informed them about alcohol. So this leads up to the parents to come in and inform their children about this stuff, or else they find out the hard way. This was something different but it helped me understand my curiosity question because it was coming from the peers itself.

How Teen Drinking Is Influenced by Romantic Partner’s Pals

The article I read about teen drinking is called “How Teen Drinking Is Influenced by Romantic Partner’s Pals.” This article was published on September 29, 2011 of last year. I have found this article online on Time Magazine website, http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/29/how-teen-drinking-is-influenced-by-romantic-partners-pals/#ixzz26yNd2zHe. Basically this article was informing us about how teens start drinking and their behaviors toward it. Studies show that teenager’s second-degree relationships are the cause of starting to drink rather than close friends. When teenagers have a new dating partner, he or she will most likely start a drinking habit due to their boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s friends. This is crazy but they tend to be friends that are like them in terms of lifestyle and values, then when they start dating, they make friends that are different from them based on their lifestyle. This is something new that I had heard about, never really thought this could be one of the problems. This answered my curiosity question because it states why teenagers start a habit of drinking and who could be the ones to affect the person. I found this article very informing and gave me a lot of information to read about. Although, I’m still not really sure how dating a new person could cause someone to drink in the first place. What do you guys have to say about this? Think it’s true, could you add more to this research or you just don’t agree with what this article has to say.