Youths see less risk from pot, study finds

Fewer adolescents think smoking pot is risky than a decade ago - a softening attitude that worries drug officials - but the use of other drugs, such as "bath salts," ecstasy, and tobacco, fell in the same period, according to an annual nationwide survey.

The Monitoring the Future survey, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has measured drug use and attitudes among 12th graders for 38 years.

For the first time, the percentage of students in 10th through 12th grade who said they had smoked a cigarette in the last month was under 10 percent; it was 24.7 percent in 1993.

The survey reported 39.5 percent of 12th graders see regular marijuana use as harmful; that's down from 44.1 percent last year and lower than the rates from the last two decades. Those numbers are troubling because previous data show a link between softening attitudes and increased use of marijuana, the agency said.

As for marijuana, 6.5 percent of high school seniors said they smoked it daily in the last year, compared to 2.4 percent in 1993. About 36 percent said they'd smoked it in the last year.

The rate of daily use concerns experts, who noted that marijuana has gotten more potent, setting up daily users for declines in IQ and less ability for success in life. - L.A. Times