Maine Teen Drug Use Bucks National Trend

It's not the teens with extra spending money who are more likely to drink and drug, Maine officials say, it's the kids from less affluent section of the state who have a higher rate of substance abuse.

A national survey by Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse released last week said teens are more apt to smoke, drink and use drugs if the are under stress, bored, or have extra spending money. The report said teens with $25 or more a week in spending money are nearly twice as likely as teens with less to smoke, drink and use illegal drugs, and more than twice as likely to get drunk.

"That doesn’t make any sense to me," David Faulkner, executive director of a statewide substance abuse prevention and treatment agency for young people, told reporters. "That means if you’re poor, you are less likely to use drugs — that’s not true.

Maine's Office of Substance Abuse’s 2002 survey of youth substance abuse found that students in northern counties of the state were more likely to use alcohol, marijuana or cigarettes than teenagers in more wealthy southern parts of the state.

Lt. Michael Riggs, a drug enforcement officer in Washington County, which has some of the state’s highest poverty and unemployment rates, said he "can’t think of a kid that gets $25 for allowance. I don’t see it here as money being a factor of whether or not kids start to use drugs."

More: Teen Pitfalls - Stress, Boredom, Extra Money