National Institute on Drug Abuse Answers Teens’ Questions about Drugs

NIDA hosted a live chat with teens during National Drug Facts Week.  Click here for the answers to frequently asked questions they provided during the chat:
Drug Facts FAQs.
Here is a sampling of the questions and answers posted on the page:

I think that when a school teaches students about drugs, some students like me, who are not aware of those drugs, learn a lot more about what’s out there. So, why are they teaching students all about drugs?

While trying drugs and alcohol might not have occurred to you until seeing all these messages from authority figures in school, many kids do get exposed to drugs and drug opportunities outside of the classroom, including on the internet. School systems know this, and figure that they had better equip you with knowledge about the risks of trying drugs and alcohol—to counter some of the misinformation that you might pick up elsewhere. However, your point is very important, and this is why we try hard to make our messages “age-appropriate” so as to maximize the usefulness of the information while minimizing the likelihood of its misuse.

Are teens particularly vulnerable to becoming addicted to drugs?

Teens are in a period of tremendous upheaval regarding how their bodies are changing and their brains as well. In fact, scientists only recently learned how much brain development goes on during the adolescent years and well into early adulthood. This means that the teen brain is wired somewhat differently from the adult brain and that exposure to drugs (or other important stimuli) during this phase can affect how the brain develops. We know that teen decision making is often different from that of adults, and can involve more risk-taking. Some of this is good—helping teens learn who they are and what they want to be, but some risks can have serious negative consequences as well—a factor that’s less impressive to the teen brain. What we do know is that early drug use is associated with later drug problems—whether this is because of changes in the brain that are especially prominent during adolescence, or other factors, such as co-occurring depression or anxiety, or exposure to trauma or stress is not yet clear.

Why do some people get addicted to drugs and others don’t?

Some people are more likely to become addicted than others. The fact is that addiction is a very complex disease, which means that the overall risk of becoming addicted—once you start using drugs—is made up of a huge number of contributing risk factors at both the biological and environmental levels. These include the genes you inherit, the conditions during your prenatal development, the experiences of your early childhood, the parenting style at home, the nurturing quality of your school and neighborhood, the level of stress you are exposed to, and any vulnerability to or co-occurrence of other mental disorders you may have; all these just to name a few! This high level of complexity explains why it is so difficult to predict who will become addicted and who won’t. This difficulty notwithstanding, there are well-known risk factors that help us to identify those who are most vulnerable and focus our prevention efforts. For example, addictions tend to run in families: if your parents smoke, you’re more than twice as likely to smoke as someone whose parents do not smoke. Also, if somebody suffers from certain mental illnesses he or she is also more likely to abuse certain drugs and become addicted.