Shocking Statistics

Summer Statistics

During the summer, kids will have many more opportunities to try drugs; statistics show more teens first try marijuana during the summer than any other months of the year.

• There is a 40 percent increase in first-time youth marijuana use during June and July, compared to the rest of the year. 

• 6,300 teens will try marijuana for the first time each day in June and July.  (SAMHSA)
  

Even kids of the highest moral character, when faced with peer pressure, may make decisions he or she would not normally make. 

“Kids now rarely use drugs and alcohol out of rebellion…. most often, they use simply because the illicit temptation is readily available.”
      -The Second Family, Dr. Ron Taffel

Continue your family drug prevention plan and update it throughout the summer months.  Prevention doesn’t take a summer vacation!

Additional tips:

• Encourage your child to continue his or her after-school activities in some form during the summer months.
• Get to know your child’s friends, especially ones they have met recently and have suddenly started spending large amounts of time with.
• Plan summer activities the entire family can be involved in, even if they are only on the weekends.
• Continue to drug test regularly during these essential months; give your child the ability to say “no.”

Overall Statistics

In 2005, 19.7 million people in the United States used an illicit drug.
   That is equal to the population of Australia.*

1.4 million youths were in treatment for substance abuse last year.
   That’s more than the population of
      Nashville, Orlando, Seattle, and Madison, WI combined.

99% of people who report abusing Oxycontin say they have used other illicit drugs in the past.

In every high school classroom, there are at least three students who are abusing prescription drugs.**

Kids who smoke pot are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than their non-pot smoking peers.***

Are you insuring YOUR child is not a statistic?

*    National Survey on Drug Use and Health National Findings (US Dept of Health and Human Services)
**   National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2005
*** The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University