LAT: Less Sex and Alcohol for Today's Teens

Less Sex and Alcohol for Today's Teens
By Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer
June 9, 2006

Teenagers today are less likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or have sex than their peers 15 years ago, according to a national study released Thursday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study found that 54% of high school students last year had smoked one cigarette in their lifetime, compared with 70% in 1991. The percentage of students who had at least one alcoholic drink dropped to 74% last year from 82% in 1991.

And during the same period, students reporting at least one sexual experience declined from 54% to 47%.

"The new report highlights some very good news," said Howell Wechsler, director of the CDC's Division of Adolescent and School Health. "We're delighted to see some progress."...

***

White students were more likely to smoke frequently or binge drink. Black teens were less likely than whites or Latinos to use tobacco, alcohol, cocaine and other drugs, but most likely to have had sex before age 13....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-teen9jun09,0,2589635.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Right? Right?! :sarcasm:

They aren't smoking and drinking because they can't get up and walk away from their computers.

well you get the idea :D

Kids these days are far worse.

thought I'd correct the headline

One in six according to a story I just read here.

Prescription drug abuse is rampant among today's teen. It's the new LSD or cocaine or whatever. Drugs come and go in fads. But if these kinds of press releases, which are nothing more than scams designed to get funding for thier anti-drug, anti-sex programs, were honest, all they'd really be saying is, "Yes! We made kids switch from alcohol to Vicodin! Whoo hoo!"

eom

It's the American way. Inspired by a certain political regime, perhaps?

Kids also don't consider oral sex to be sex - did the stdyn reporteds in the LA times deefi9ne their terms?

Teen smoking no longer on the decline in U.S.
Number of high schoolers who smoke has platueaued, study shows
The Associated Press


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13231930/
Updated: 5:41 p.m. PT June 9, 2006
ATLANTA - The long, steady decline in teen smoking in the U.S. since the late 1990s appears to have come to a standstill, health officials said Friday.

A survey released this week showed that smoking among high school students held steady at around one in four teenagers between 2003 and 2005. Two other surveys in the past year or so found that teen smoking has apparently plateaued since 2002.

"We were making good progress, and now it looks like we're not," said Dr. Corinne Husten, acting director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The trend was outlined in the CDC's National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which is conducted every other year and involves about 14,000 high school students across the country. The results of the latest survey were released Thursday.

The survey had been showing a steady and pronounced decline in youth smoking since 1997, when more than 36 percent of students said they had smoked in the previous 30 days. The percentages dropped to about 35 in 1999, 28.5 in 2001 and 22 in 2003.
<snip>

Simply because, well, it's a good boogeyman.

fully.

And they never inhale, either, right?

I think they just don't trust the interviewers.