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Medical Marijuana: A Survey of Teenagers and Their Parents

Department of Pediatrics, Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children, Falls Church, Virginia

Meghan N. Cooper, BA

Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University M-2006, Richmond, Virginia

Marife Oria, MD

Department of Pediatrics, Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children, Falls Church, Virginia

Michael J. Sheridan, ScD

Section of Biostatistics, Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children, Falls Church, Virginia

Parents and their teenage children were questioned about medical marijuana and whether they believed that passage of medical marijuana laws in their states would increase teenage use of marijuana for non-medical purposes. A 24-question written survey was distributed separately to teenager/parent pairs who visited 1 of 2 suburban general pediatric offices located in Vienna, Virginia or Mason, Ohio. Completed surveys were collected from 393 parent-teen pairs. Only 13% of the teenagers admitted to ever smoking marijuana while 6% admitted smoking it in the past 30 days. There was good agreement between parents and teens (81% of parents and 76% of their teenagers who responded to the survey) that regular use of marijuana causes harm to many or most users, not just "potheads." Although there was close agreement in the range of opinions about medical marijuana (i.e., from liberal use to no use) by parents as a group and the teens as a group, agreement between the answers of parents matched with their own children was poor based on K-coefficient analysis (K=0.20). Twenty-eight percent of the parent group and 55% of the teenagers believed that passage of state laws for medical marijuana would make it easier for teens to smoke marijuana for medical purposes.

Clinical Pediatrics, Vol. 42, No. 6, 547-551 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/000992280304200610


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