If your children are hanging out with friends who drink and do drugs the chances that they will also drink and drug, if they are not already doing so, according to a report from Statistics Canada.

Adolescents with friends who drink alcohol or smoke marijuana are more likely to do so themselves, the report said. Two-thirds of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 who said all or most of their friends had used alcohol also reported that they had been drunk at least once themselves. Four-fifths of adolescents who smoked marijuana had friends who did so.

About 42 per cent of the youths in the survey reported having had at least one alcoholic drink, and more than one-fifth said they had been drunk at least once, according to press reports. In comparison, 8 per cent who had few or no friends using alcohol had ever been drunk.

Youths who were apathetic or performed poorly at school were twice as likely to get drunk as those who did well at school and showed a strong commitment to their studies, the report said.

The research was based on 4,296 adolescents aged 12 to 15 who participated in the 1998/1998 National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth.

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