Study finds girls start younger with marijuana, booze

NEW YORK — Even as teen drug use is declining overall, a new government analysis shows that teenage girls are trying marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes at higher rates than boys — a reversal of past trends that is causing alarm among experts. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released by John Walters, the national drug policy director, indicates 1.5 million girls ages 12 to 17 started drinking alcohol in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available. That compares with 1.28 million boys “This is the first time that we’ve recorded this kind of relationship between boys’ and girls’ drug use,” Walters said last week. “In the past, boys have had higher rates of use — and significantly higher rates of use at certain times in the past.” Dr. Ralph Lopez, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College and the author of “The Teen Health Book: A Parents’ Guide to Adolescent Health and Well-Being,” said teenage girls are at risk for drug and alcohol use because they feel pressure to succeed academically and also to look perfect. “They have to be skinny and gorgeous,” he said. “We don’t do that to the boys.”