Some Parents Introduce Kids to Drugs

N E W   Y O R K, Aug. 24 -- One in five drug abusers in some treatment programs in the United States received their first taste of these illegal substances from their parents, usually before the age of 18, a new survey says.

The survey found that drug treatment candidates at 70 Phoenix House drug treatment programs in the United States are 19 times more likely to have been introduced to illicit drugs by a family member than a professional drug dealer, according to Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, the national research firm in New York that conducted the study.

Twenty percent obtained the drugs from the parents, and of these 6 percent even used heroin with them.

“These findings should disturb everyone involved in preventing drug use among kids,” says Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, a psychiatrist and president of Phoenix House. Rosenthal believes the findings of the survey reveal that too many parents in America view teenage drug use as little more than a right of passage.

Not a Representative Population

The study does not apply to the general population of drug users, however.

“It’s important to realize that these are kids who have already gotten in serious trouble with drugs,” says Alyse Booth, spokeswoman for the National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, in New York City, commenting on the study.

“ I don’t think 20 percent of parents across the country are smoking dope with their kids,” she says, yet added, “a large majority of baby boomers did use illegal drugs and are more likely to have a benign attitude [to their kids using them].”

The survey noted similar levels of parent-teen drug sharing among whites, blacks and Hispanics, as well as among urban and suburban residents.

“In this survey we met the neighborhood pusher and he is a lot like us,” Phoenix House’s Dr. Rosenthal stated.

Stephen Higgins, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Vermont in Burlington, says addiction professionals have known for some time that most people are introduced to drug use by friends and relatives and not by a professional pusher. But he says this may be the first formal study that attempts to quantify that phenomenon.