Marijuana use at all-time low, but girls just as likely to toke

[grace]

Marijuana use at all-time low, but girls just as likely to toke

Tamara McLean

July 30, 2008 12:00am

Courier Mail

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...5003426,00.html

 

RATES of cannabis use are at an all-time low, but a "hard core" of addicts remains - and teenage girls are just as likely to smoke dope as boys.

 

The National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre in Sydney released a report yesterday confirming that rates of cannabis use had continued to drop among Australians aged 14 to 39 over the past decade.

 

And while men in their 20s and 30s are still more likely to smoke the drug than females, the gender difference has disappeared among teenagers.

 

"The idea that boys are more likely to smoke than girls is really a thing of the past now," centre director Jan Copeland said.

 

Statistics show that between 1995 and 2007, teenage use dropped from 36 per cent to 13 per cent for boys and from 20 per cent to 13 per cent for girls.

 

"That's a spectacular drop for boys and a considerably smaller one for girls, because they were less risky in the first place, so now they're in the same place," Professor Copeland said.

 

Studies have shown a similar pattern for tobacco and alcohol use.

 

Professor Copeland said those deterred from cannabis over the decade were the low-level experimenters who were always at less risk of harm and who took in the messages from anti-marijuana campaigns.

 

"What we are left with now is the hard core of both boys and girls, if you like, the committed cannabis users who have other problems in their lives," Professor Copeland said.

 

"It's going to take more than an ad campaign on television to deter them."

 

The biggest group of committed smokers has historically been 20-somethings, but the report showed they were now in their 30s.

 

Professor Copeland said this was an ageing cohort of people who started smoking in the 1970s and 1980s and had failed to give up.

 

The report also examined cannabis-related presentations at two Sydney emergency departments and showed more than three-quarters were male.

 

More than a third were violent and had mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and major anxiety.

[WantDaChronic]

if i were 10 years younger this would have been fantastic news, unfortunately i have only had 5 female stoner friends and a good 100+ male ones....bloody cock fest compared to today's youth apparently

[jodacatt]

Wow ! That's pretty sad........ much different here....

[BlackBeauty]

Woohoo!! Go chicky stoners - go!!

[ActiveA]

Thats pretty true.

 

My High school stoner mates (and still are) mostly female, besides myself there was one other guy.

 

 

Ah, I miss the days of sitting in a circle on the oval passing the Bong at lunch.

 

Good times.

[tony2wheelsgood]

"What we are left with now is the hard core of both boys and girls, if you like, the committed cannabis users wave.gif who have other problems in their lives," Professor Copeland said.

 

they know that this "type" of people are societies' freethinkers who see through government bullshit.