Parental Influences On Adolescent Marijuana Use And The Baby Boom Generation

This report had two major aims. (1) Test the hypothesis that the increase in marijuana use by recent generations of young people was due to the fact that their parents were members of the baby boom generation. These parents belonged to cohorts who became heavily involved in using marijuana, and who, because of their adolescent experience, may have unintentionally facilitated the use of marijuana by their children. (2) Assess the extent of parental influence on children's marijuana use, irrespective of membership in the baby boom cohorts. The analyses took advantage of the inclusion of multiple respondents per household in the Nat. Household Surveys on Drug Abuse. Charts and tables.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of parental factors on annual (past year) marijuana use in African American youth within the Greater Cincinnati area. The following research questions were examined for this study: 1) Do family structure, parental education and parental job status impact African American adolescent marijuana use? 2) Does impact of all these variables differ based on sex and grade? Participants were African American students in 7th through 12th grade (N = 7488) in public and private schools within the Greater Cincinnati area. Logistic regression analyses revealed that annual marijuana use differed based on family structure, parental education, and parental job status. More specifically, annual marijuana use was highest among students not living with both parents, students who had parents with a high school diploma/GED or less, and students who had parents who were unemployed. This held true for males, females, junior high and high school students, with one exception family structure did not significantly impact male marijuana use. Findings should be considered by health educators and preventionists when developing programs and efforts to prevent youth marijuana use.