NEWS: Daily Telegraph - 22/09/07 'Kids learn drug habits from mum'

[lil angel15]

Kids learn drug habits from mum
September 22, 2007 12:00am

CHILDREN with smoking mothers are more likely to be regular marijuana users by early adulthood, a new study has found.

Dr Mohammad Reza Hayatbakhsh of the University of Queensland in Brisbane and associates used data from a project that began following a group of pregnant women in Brisbane between 1981 and 1983.

The women had completed questionnaires on their health and lifestyle habits - including smoking and drinking - while they were pregnant, and at several other points as their children grew up.

Part of the link between mother's cigarette smoking and children's marijuana use seems to be explained by the fact that children of smokers were more likely to have been rebellious and aggressive as teenagers, the Australian researchers note.

Past studies have found that children of smokers are more likely than their peers to take up the habit themselves; less is known about whether parents' smoking and drinking habits are related to their children's marijuana use.

However, many people who use the drug first try it as a teenager, the authors note, and family environment is an important influence on teenagers' behaviour.

The researcher then evaluated nearly 3 200 of these women's offspring who were 21 years old, and had been followed since birth. The findings are published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The Daily Telegraph

 

[peaked]

Kids learn drug habits from mum, dad off the hook

I think the link here between mothers smoking tobacco and children smoking cannabis is weak, at best. For a start, I think that anyone who smokes tobacco is more likely to try cannabis in the first place, since smoking something isn't such a foreign idea to them.

I also don't feel that a parent smoking will necessarily mean that the children will smoke too. I know a lot of people who have completely avoided tobacco and/or cannabis because of seeing the side effects it had on their parents. Conversely, I think there are many people with "straight edge" parents that might be inclined to try smoking because they haven't seen first hand what the side effects. Instead they might only see it as a positive based on short experiences with other people enjoying themselves socially while smoking.

 

[Chronik Fatigue]

Kids learn drug habits from mum

Then where did mum learn them?!?