More than three-quarters of the teen-agers surveyed in a recent Gallup Poll on students’ use of alcohol and drugs said they have tried some form of alcohol.
According to the poll, which surveyed 416 students between the ages of 13 and 18, 59 percent of the respondents said they had “occasionally,” and an additional 17 percent said they had “at least once,” tried some form of alcohol. Twelve percent of the students said they had combined use of alcohol with the use of other drugs.
Twenty-six percent of all of the students surveyed and 39 percent of those over age 15 said they had used marijuana.
A survey conducted by the New York City Department of Health last fall and released earlier this year shows that older students use marijuana and alcohol more frequently than cigarettes.
A University of Florida study conducted in 1980 and 1982 and released last month, found that of 982 9th- and 12th-grade students surveyed in one school district, approximately 68 percent said they had smoked marijuana at least once.
Fifteen percent said they used the drug “somewhat frequently” and 18 percent said they smoked it monthly.
And a survey of 5,324 Utah high-school seniors reported that 58 percent of the students said they had used alcohol and 36 percent said they had used marijuana at least once.--ant
