Reuters – Janice Neumann
“A small U.S. study appears to confirm adult fears that teens who spend more than the average amount of unsupervised time “hanging out” with peers have higher odds of smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking alcohol. Researchers also found that teens more heavily involved in sports were less likely to smoke tobacco or pot, but more likely to drink, whereas kids who worked part-time jobs were more likely to smoke and drink but less likely to use pot. Unfortunately, greater than average involvement in structured school and after-school activities did not seem to offer a protective effect. The study team expected structured activities to have the strongest negative relationship to kids’ use of forbidden substances, and therefore the greatest predictive power, said lead author Kenneth Lee, a doctoral student in education at the University of California, Irvine. “But we’re seeing it’s unsupervised time with peers that’s being the most predictive of substance abuse,” Lee told Reuters Health by email.”(more)