Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies. (April 24, 2008). The NSDUH Report: Parent Awareness of Youth Use of Cigarettes, Alcohol, and Marijuana. Rockville, MD.

Data from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) indicate that 17.0 percent of youths aged 12 to 17 used cigarettes in the past year, 32.9 percent used alcohol, and 13.2 percent used marijuana. Parents are encouraged to communicate with their children about drugs and alcohol, and some research has examined the extent to which parents are aware of their children's drug and alcohol use.

Studies focusing on the general population have found high levels of parent awareness of adolescent cigarette use, but awareness of alcohol use is low; findings on parent awareness of adolescent marijuana use are mixed.

NSDUH includes a sample of parents and their children who live in the same household. Parent-child pairs in NSDUH are composed of a child aged 12 to 17 and his or her biological, step, adoptive, or foster parent. NSDUH asks youths aged 12 to 17 about alcohol and illicit drug use during the past year. Adults in the parent-child sample are asked whether they think their child has used alcohol or other drugs during the past year.

This report uses data from the paired sample to examine overall rates of youth cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use in the past year, as well as parent awareness of their child's use of these substances. Parents were considered to be aware of their child's substance use if both the parent and the child reported that the child used a specific substance in the past year. Household composition was slightly different for mother-child and father-child pairs,6 with mother-child pairs being more likely than father-child pairs to come from one-parent households.7 Weighted data indicate that approximately 22.2 percent of youths in mother-child pairs were in one-parent households compared with 5.6 percent of youths in father-child pairs. All findings presented in this report are based on combined NSDUH data from 2002 through 2006 and are weighted to be nationally representative of mother-child and father-child pairs in the United States.