Smoking stigma turns teens off marijuana

Changing attitudes to cigarette smoking are being linked to a reduction in the number of teenagers smoking cannabis, drug experts say.

An Auckland University student health and wellbeing survey released this week found a considerable drop in the rates of cigarette and cannabis use, which the Drug Foundation believed is linked to anti-smoking campaigns.

Director Ross Bell said the significant drop in cannabis use - from 39 per cent of secondary school students in 2001 to 27 per cent last year - was a good shift as the drug affected adolescent brain development.

He believed New Zealand's long-running anti-smoking campaign, focusing on how smoking damages the lungs, had influenced teens' perception of all forms of smoking.

"Young people are transferring the view that smoking is bad for you to anything they smoke, whether it's pot or tobacco."

European drug experts have also made the link. Britain's The Guardian reported last month that smoking bans meant it had become less socially acceptable to smoke cigarettes, and marijuana joints, in public.

"A lot of young people are strongly anti-cigarette smoking and as society changes the way it views tobacco it seems to be changing attitudes to cannabis as well," Paul Griffiths, of the European monitoring centre for drugs, told the newspaper.

Mr Bell said the situation was slightly different in Europe, where cannabis was mixed with tobacco before smoking.

He said New Zealand's fall in tobacco use had been expected, but the cannabis drop was surprising. "Though we do know a lot of cannabis smokers are also tobacco smokers."

British rates of marijuana use are also lower with just 20 per cent of British youth smoking the drug in 2000, falling to 15.6 per cent last year, The Guardian reported.

Cannabis remains the main illicit drug used by Kiwis - and the most used drug worldwide - with a 2006 survey finding around 80 per cent of New Zealanders had tried the drug.

WAITING TO INHALE

2001 - 2007

Tried smoking cigarettes: 52 per cent - 32 per cent

Smoke cigarettes weekly: 16 per cent - 8 per cent

Tried cannabis: 39 per cent - 27 per cent

Source: Youth07, the Health and Wellbeing of Secondary School Students in New Zealand, Auckland University.