Study of pre-teens yields surprises about alcohol, tobacco and marijuana

They may only be in 4th or 5th grade, but 1 in 10 pre-teen children already say they’re curious about using alcohol or tobacco products, and 1 in 50 say they’re curious about using marijuana, a new study shows.

As many as 3% of the nearly 12,000 9- and 10-year-olds surveyed say they already have a friend who uses one of these substances. And those who said they did were also much more likely to be curious about trying alcohol or tobacco and other nicotine-containing products themselves.

Meanwhile, up to 35% of the children’s parents said their kids may have easy access to alcohol at home, while smaller percentages said the same about tobacco (7%) or marijuana (3%).

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And about 25% of parents said they hadn’t yet set rules for their pre-teen children about whether they’re allowed to use these substances. The new study, published in the June issue of Drug & Alcohol Dependence Reports, was led by a University of Michigan researcher using data from a large national project.

The findings show considerable variation by gender, race/ethnicity and family income in many of the measures. Across the board, boys were more likely to be curious about substances than girls.

Black parents were much more likely than other parents to have a rule that their children may not use alcohol, tobacco or marijuana, and low-income parents were slightly more likely than those with middle or high incomes to have such a rule.

Meanwhile, pre-teens whose parents made $100,000 or more per year were much more likely to be curious about alcohol, and their parents were more likely to say it was readily available in the home. Lower-income children, with family incomes of $50,000 or less, were slightly more likely to be curious about nicotine and marijuana, and to have it available in the home.

Across all groups, kids were more likely to be curious about alcohol or nicotine if their parents said that these substances are readily available in the home. The same was true for nicotine curiosity among kids whose parents hadn’t made specific rules about their use of tobacco or other nicotine-containing substances.