Drugs take toll on good and bad kids alike.

• Position: Adolescence

People who begin drinking and using marijuana regularly prior to their 15th birthday face a higher risk of early pregnancy, as well as a pattern of school failure. criminal convictions, sexually-transmitted disease. and substance dependence that lasts into their 30s. A study has been able to sort out the difficult question of whether it is bad kids who do drugs, or doing drugs that makes kids bad. The answer is both, maintains Candice Odgers, assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who coauthored a report on the topic.

Half of the study subjects who were using alcohol and marijuana regularly before age 15 indeed were the so-called "bad kids" who came from an abusive, criminal, or substance-infested household and had behavior problems as children. However, the other half were the "good kids" from more stable backgrounds, but they also ended up in poorer health in their 30s.

Odgers indicates it is clear from the data that adolescent exposure to drugs and alcohol can make a good kid veer off on a bad trajectory. "The good kids who do drugs end up looking like the bad kids who didn't do drugs," Odgers notes. The good kids, who were without behavior problems as children and did not have any of the family risk factors, but who began using drugs and alcohol before 15, ended up being 3.6 times more likely to be dependent on substances at age 32. They also were more likely than the other good kids to wind up with a criminal conviction and a herpes infection.

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