American Teens Are Less Likely Than European Teens to Use Cigarettes and Alcohol, but More Likely to Use Illicit Drugs

American Teens Are Less Likely Than European Teens to Use Cigarettes and Alcohol, but More Likely to Use Illicit Drugs. To read the article on Science Daily click here.

Editor's note: The fact that American teens smoke less cigarettes and drink less alcohol than their European counterparts is a great thing even though they use more illicit drugs. Here's why: 30,000 Americans die every year from the so called "illicit drugs", 100,000 Americans die every year from alcohol, and 410,000 Americans die every year from tobacco. What's America's drug problem.

Further, there is no mention of the use/abuse of psychotropic drugs, and studies have shown that marijuana is more effective and has less side effects in managing psychiatric symptoms such as anxiety, ADD, depression than physician prescribed psychotropic drugs.

The fact that American teenagers are using less alcohol and tobacco than Europeans is an indication that our public health policies and prevention efforts are working in the United States. Many thanks to the substance abuse professionals and other people and organizations who have worked hard to produce these good results! 

I have spend over 20 years of my career working in the area of substance abuse prevention both professionally and personally. Two of my 9 children, Ryan aged 8, and Brigid aged 5, were killed in a drunk driving crash in 1993. They were killed by a 3 time drunk driver who had never received any treatment for his alcoholism and who was 35 when he killed my children was well know to have been a troubled teen who started drinking around age 13 or 14. The drunk driving fatalities have dropped from about 17,000 in the 80s and 90s to about 11,000 in 2010. It has taken a lot of work to bring about this positive change but 11,000 drunk driving deaths is still too high. If there were 11,000 Americans killed every year by terrorists, Americans would be engaged and willing to bomb only god knows who.

We, as a country, are on the right track, and we have accumulated a lot of practice wisdom over the last 4 decades on how to minimize the negative impacts of alcohol and tobacco use. May we continue the good work and get the death rates from alcohol and tobacco to zero.