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A popular television show covering peer pressure with smoking, although it is smoking cigarettes.

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About peer pressure with smoking weed.

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Just a short silent film about a kid being peer pressured into smoking.

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A boyfriend is peer pressured by his girlfriend to smoke weed

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How we can use peer pressure

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Peer pressure can be a bad thing, leading teens to make poor choices and develop bad habits. But there is such a thing as positive peer pressure which can lead to making better choices and positive habits.

When it comes to using marijuana, teens are very susceptible to the influence of friends - they can make it easier to use or more likely they will stop using.

A recent study examined what influences teens most in terms of continuing or quitting their marijuana use. The study used surveys from 1995-1996 for some of their data, but explained that since drug use rates among high school students have remained more or less constant during the intervening years, the study findings are nonetheless currently relevant. Current estimates say that around 38% of high school students are experimenting with smoking marijuana.

Teen marijuana abuse study

This study tracked 458 high school teens who smoked pot at least once per week. Then, 12 months later the researchers learned that close to 20 percent had quit using marijuana. What influenced them to stop? Their friends.

According to the research, teens kept smoking if their friends were smoking. They also continued using if their friends went to another school than the one they attended. On the other end, teens tended to quit using pot if their friends weren't using it.

Influence of close peers on smoking pot

Peer pressure is a known risk factor for all kinds of behavior, including marijuana use, but there are also other contributing factors. Those other factors which are often considered as contributory to pot use seemed to hold less sway, according to the researchers. Things like overly-restrictive parenting and socioeconomic disadvantage did not appear to factor in as greatly as the teen's immediate peer group.

Change of marijuana use in adulthood

Just as alcohol drinkers tend to socialize mainly with other drinkers, teens who smoke marijuana tend to befriend other pot smokers. It isn't that these friends cause them to use marijuana, but more that they don't encourage them to stop using. Once in adulthood, grown-ups find that the demands of responsible living can sometimes act as limits or deterrents to continued marijuana use. The need to go to work, pay bills, drive others safely in a car and maintain a strong marriage relationship tends to pull adults away from continuing the pot habit.

For teens that have yet to encounter these kinds of responsibilities and adult roles, friends still wield the greatest amount of influence. Thus, pot-smoking teens tend to be friends with other teens who use the drug. But if the teen can develop a different set of friends who don't use marijuana, then it becomes easier for them to quit.

Support for and against marijuana use

Unfortunately, the mood across America at the moment is mostly sympathetic toward pot use. Nearly one half of all Americans don't believe that marijuana is a problem substance and would be willing to vote to legalize it in one way or another. This means that finding the friends who abstain will become harder.

Part of the support behind marijuana use is that the perceived risks of using it have gone down over time. Adults are less worried about the ill-effects of marijuana use, seeing few, if any. Parents do continue to feel concern over teen use of marijuana, but without effort, these attitudes may also begin to crumble.

What is needed is a campaign that lays out the honest risks associated with marijuana use. The education campaign should also focus on the negative consequences of drug-using friendships. As the perceived risks of marijuana go down, teen use can be expected to rise, along with less pressure to quit.

Peer pressure can be a valuable tool in the fight against teen drug use, but first the teens need to be convinced of the real dangers.

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About Addiction.com Staff

Addiction.com staff include writers, editors and other contributors with long-standing experience in reporting on health, medicine, news and related topics.

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Peer Pressure Against Marijuana Abuse | Addiction.com

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Peer pressure can be a bad thing, leading teens to make poor choices and develop bad habits. But there is such a thing as positive peer pressure which can lead to making better choices and positive habits.

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Peer pressure with smoking weed.