Parents who talk to children about the risks of illicit drugs
sometimes despair that their warning goes in one ear and out the other.
But the message just might stick in a young brain if it is repeated enough,
according to a study of parental and adolescent attitudes released today.
The study by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a nonprofit coalition,
also reported a dramatic disconnection between parents and children in
getting the message through. The study is being released at www.drugfreeamerica.org.
An overwhelming 98 percent of the parents in the study said they had
talked with their children about drugs, but only 65 percent of teenagers
recalled having had such a conversation. And 27 percent of teenagers said
they learned a lot from their family about the hazards of drugs.
Not surprisingly, the study reported that the more adolescents heard
from parents about he risks, the less likely they were to use drugs, even
though some failed to heed the advice. Of the teenagers in the study who
said they had heard nothing at home about the risks of drugs, 45 percent
said they had smoked marijuana within the last year. One-third of those
who said they had learned a little at home used marijuana in the same period.
But among teenagers who said they had learned a lot, only 26 percent said
they smoked marijuana, the drug of choice after alcohol and tobacco.
Comparable reductions were reported in the use of inhalants, hallucinogens
like LSD and crack cocaine.
When parents hesitate to tell their children about drugs, said Stephen
Dnistrian, executive vice president of the partnership, "We can make a
pretty safe assumption that there is probably not a lot of communication
between parent and child about a lot of things."
The latest Partnership Attitude Tracking Study, the 12th such study
since 1987, was conducted last year by Audits and Surveys Worldwide, a
a market research firm based in New York. It sampled 6,852 teen-agers,
ages 13 to 18; 2,358 children, 9 to 12, and 809 parents across the United
States. The margin of error in the responses was 1.8 percentage points
for teen-agers, 2.8 for re-teen-agers and 3.9 for parents.
Though virtually all the parents said they raised the issue of drugs
with their teen-agers, fewer than half, or 48 percent, said they had done
so four or more times in the previous year.
Black parents were more likely than Hispanic or white parents to say
they discussed the risks of drugs regularly with their children. Fifty-seven
percent of black parents in the study said they did so, compared with 45
percent of Hispanic parents and 44 percent of white parents. And 31 percent
of the black children in the study recalled having such conversations,
compared with 29 percent of Hispanic children but only 19 percent of white
children.
Many parents cannot seem to bring themselves to believe that their children
might experiment with drugs. According to the study, 42 percent of the
teen-agers said they had tried smoking marijuana, but only 14 percent of
the parents thought this was possible. And 53 percent of teen-agers said
they had been offered marijuana; 37 percent of parents considered it likely.
The White House's director of national drug control policy, Gen. Barry
R. McCaffrey, said the study made an important point about the disparity
between perception and reality in parents' conversations with their children
about the dangers of drugs. "Like a good teacher, they must check the feedback,"
he said.
General McCaffrey's Office of National Drug Control Policy defined as
its first goal educating and enabling young people to reject illegal drugs,
as well as alcohol and tobacco. Congress appropriated $195 million for
a national campaign to sway an audience of 9- to 18-year-olds with prime-time
commercials and print advertisements. The campaign, which began in July,
also tries to persuade parents to confront the problem.