{"id":7747,"date":"2017-09-25T19:53:54","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T19:53:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com?p=2800294&amp;preview_id=2800294"},"modified":"2017-09-25T19:53:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T19:53:54","slug":"fewer-teens-are-drinking-but-some-are-replacing-it-with-marijuana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/fewer-teens-are-drinking-but-some-are-replacing-it-with-marijuana\/","title":{"rendered":"Fewer teens are drinking, but some are replacing it with marijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/fewer-teens-are-drinking-but-some-are-replacing-it-with-marijuana\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"large-10 large-centered small-12 columns\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta-date\">Published: Sep 25, 2017, 7:47 am \u2022 Updated: Sep 25, 2017, 11:42 am<span class=\"single-comments-link\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"byline\">By <strong>Tara Bahrampour<\/strong>, <em> The Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bennett Wright tried vodka once, at a friend\u2019s house, and it didn\u2019t taste good.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike legions of bygone teenagers who grimaced and took another swig figuring it was part of growing up and they\u2019d get used to it, Wright stopped there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just saw no fun in it,\u201d said Wright, a North Bethesda, Maryland, resident who is 16 and doesn\u2019t drink alcohol of any kind. \u201cThere\u2019s just no appeal to me, and I just don\u2019t understand why kids do it. All of my good friends don\u2019t drink, and my girlfriend\u2019s the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If that sounds counterintuitive to those who were teenagers in the mid- to late-20th century, it fits right onto the curve of teenagers\u2019 proclivities in recent years.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2017\/09\/19\/teens-not-drinking-driving-study-shows\/\">A study released last week<\/a> in the journal Child Development found teens are increasingly delaying activities that had long been seen as rites of passage into adulthood, including alcohol consumption. Over the past four decades the portion of teenagers who have tried it has plunged from 93 percent to 67 percent, according to the study.<\/p>\n<p>Locally, statistics from several police jurisdictions show a decrease in teen criminal activity involving alcohol.<\/p>\n<p>The number of car crashes in Maryland involving drivers aged 16-20 who had used alcohol or drugs fell dramatically in the past decade, from 1,166 in 2002 to 380 in 2014, according to the state\u2019s Highway Safety Office.<\/p>\n<p>In Alexandria, Virginia, the number of alcohol-related charges against teenagers last year was less than half of the number in 2000, according to the police department. Statistics provided by Arlington County and the District of Columbia did not go back far enough to show a trendline.<\/p>\n<p>As students poured out of Woodrow Wilson High School in the District of Columbia on Thursday afternoon, many shrugged when asked about alcohol.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s never appealed to me; I\u2019d rather keep my wits about me,\u201d said Olivia Wood, 14, a freshman.<\/p>\n<p>Charlie Wash, 17, a defensive end on the varsity football team, said his friends drink but he has no interest. \u201cI never really needed it to have fun,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something I put on my bucket list.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In an era when young people are under mounting pressure to succeed academically and professionally, teens may be shying away from drinking out of fear it will distract them from that goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I focus on alcohol, I\u2019m not going to focus on my career,\u201d said Wilson freshman Avery Wright (no relation to Bennett), 14. And she feels no pressure from friends; they don\u2019t drink either.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the change may lie in deeper societal awareness of the dangers of alcohol compared with a generation ago, said Colleen Sheehey-Church, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. \u201cI don\u2019t think parents knew enough back then,\u201d she said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t want their kids to drink, but parents didn\u2019t know enough about how to start that conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the 1980s, when her organization began, \u201cdrinking alcohol was a late-night joke, it was a punchline,\u201d she said. \u201cYou had certain actors that would play the drunk person and everybody thought it was funny. When we realized that we were losing 25,000 people a year, we started looking at it more closely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In some cases, parents who grew up in that more alcohol-soaked era don\u2019t realize things have changed. When Bennett Wright\u2019s mother, Jenny Goldstock Wright, was a teenager, she said, \u201cthe whole mission was to drink.\u201d So she tried to warn her son that he couldn\u2019t fool her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say, \u2018Believe me, I know what\u2019s going on,\u2019 and he\u2019d say, \u2018Mom, that\u2019s not what\u2019s going on,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not what they do, and I\u2019m thrilled.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fact that fewer teens are drinking does not mean they are avoiding all mind-altering substances. Several of those interviewed said alcohol has been supplanted as the substance of choice by marijuana, which became legal to possess and consume in the District nearly three years ago. That, they say, has made it more accessible and more ubiquitous, inside and outside the city limits.<\/p>\n<p>Unwilling to go on the record as users of the drug (the legal age for possession and use in the District is 21), the teens described it as calming and less likely to put them in compromising positions than alcohol. As one put it, after smoking marijuana, \u201cyou still have your morals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This rang true for Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor who conducted the Child Development study and is the author of \u201ciGen: Why Today\u2019s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy \u2013 and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s a link between alcohol and aggression, and in that way it\u2019s a very good fit between marijuana and this generation\u2019s psychology,\u201d she said. \u201cGoing toward something that would make them more aggressive is really not their style.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not all teens are mild-mannered teetotalers. During her junior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Georgia Gray said her then-boyfriend forced her to down three beers before friends intervened. That was the 18-year-old\u2019s first encounter with drinking, she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just felt sick and dizzy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt kind of freaked me out, not being in control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since starting this year at Towson University, she has seen a lot more alcohol consumption among her peers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels awkward, because I don\u2019t really want to drink, but everyone else is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>While she might try champagne sometime after she turns 21, she doesn\u2019t anticipate an adult life of drinking. \u201cI don\u2019t like that altered state of feeling,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m fine with the way I am currently.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .row --> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<p>A recent study found teens are increasingly avoiding alcohol consumption. For some of them, it is because they prefer the effects of marijuana. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6813,4995,77,5667,9,6833,5019,7154,1,3,61,1736],"tags":[6818,4996,2655,5673,6835,5022,7156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}