NCJ Number
203733
Date Published
August 2003
Length
107 pages
Annotation
This report offers findings from a school survey of students in grades 6 through 12 regarding their attitudes toward marijuana.
Abstract
During the Spring of 2003, RoperASW conducted school surveys regarding student attitudes toward marijuana for the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. The sample included 8,336 students in grades 6 through 12; 4,339 middle school students in grades 6 through 8; and 3,997 high school students in grades 9 through 12. The sample of schools included public, private, and parochial schools across the country. In order to allow for an accurate analysis by race, African-American and Hispanic areas were oversampled. The oversampling was then balanced by weighting to gain correct proportions in the final analysis. Results of statistical analyses indicate that 42.4 percent of students in grades 6 through 12 agreed that they had learned a lot about the risks involved with drugs from television commercials, which is an increase of 11.7 percent from the 2002 survey. A full 53.9 percent of 6th through 12th graders reported they regularly saw or heard anti-drug advertisements, up 4.8 percent since the 2002 survey. Moreover, 43.2 percent of these students agreed that these messages about drugs made them less likely to use drugs. Ninety-three percent of students in grades 6 through 12 reported they had seen one or more of the marijuana negative consequences commercials put forth by the Office of National Drug Control. Fifty-nine percent of students agreed that regular use of marijuana involves a great deal of risk; this figure remains unchanged since 2002. A significant portion of 6th through 12 graders believed that using marijuana puts one at risk for trying harder drugs (68.1 percent) or becoming addicted to marijuana (67.2 percent). However, there was a modest decline in the number of students who agreed that marijuana users put themselves in danger of dropping out of school, not getting into college, missing out on the good things in life, and becoming a dealer. Overall, the proportion of students in grades 6 through 12 who occasionally or regularly use marijuana has remained relatively stable since 2002. Finally, the report concludes that heavy exposure to anti-marijuana advertisements may be having an impact on teenage marijuana use. Tables