Sunday, March 16, 2014
Perceived Risk and Risk
A very interesting point made in the course text about marijuana use was that use is often tied to teenager perception of if marijuana is harmful to them or not. When high school aged students were interviewed during the peak of marijuana use in the United States in 1979, 18% of high school seniors believed marijuana use posed a health risk to them. Marijuana use in 1992 declined considerably and when surveyed, 40% of high school seniors believed that marijuana posed a great health risk to them. Availability of marijuana has remained consistent. Will the current national move towards liberalizing and minimizing associated health risks result in increased use by the youth in our country? Are we potentially setting ourselves up for future social issues we will need to address?
Resource:
Hart, C., Ksir, C. 2013. Drugs, Society & Human Behavior. Fifteenth Edition. McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., New York, NY.
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I agree. There seems to be a lot of mixed messages sent to our children about marijuana use. It will be interesting in the next few years to see if other states follow suit to legalizing it, or will current legalization be reversed.
ReplyDeleteThank you Gina, at times I begin to wonder if my conservative views regarding drugs is simply out dated. I am open to dialog regarding these issues.
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