Saying no to tobacco, alcohol or marijuana in junior high school doesn't mean there is something wrong with you. Psychological researchers have found that teens who do not try these substances cope better with their problems during early adolescence than teens who use tobacco, alcohol and marijuana.

Psychologists at Yeshiva University surveyed 1,184 adolescents for three years during their 7th through 9th grade years to determine if certain variables such as life stress, deviance-prone attitudes, parental and peer substance use, parental support, and academic competence can predict which students will escalate their substance use -- develop high-intensity use -- and which will not. The study found that measuring these variables can predict who will escalate their drug use. For example, "If an adolescent enters 7th grade experiencing a combination of high stress, low parental support, and low academic competence, he or she is more [likely] to [increase his/her] substance use," the study concluded.

But the study found that protective factors such as emotional support from parents, e.g., listening and trying to understand a teenager, can help to offset risk for escalation and that no one variable alone can predict escalation. This confirms previous research that adolescent substance use is related to a number of risk and protective factors. "Just because a teenager is not on the honor roll doesn't mean that they are going to turn to smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol," says psychologist Thomas Ashby Wills, Ph.D., lead author of the study. "It is a complex combination of the variables that leads to escalated substance use."

The study also found that teens who used substances frequently had higher levels of stress, could not cope as well with their problems, had the attitude that behavior such as lying or damaging property was not wrong, and had lower levels of parental support and self control than non-using teens.

Reference: "Escalated Substance Use: A Longitudinal Grouping Analysis From Early to Middle Adolescence" by Thomas Asby Wills, Ph.D., Grace McNamara, Ph.D., Donato Vaccaro, Ph.D., and A. Elizabeth Hirky, Ph.D. in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 105, No. 2, pp 166-180.

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