Adolescent judgments of the personal, prudential, and normative aspects of drug usage. Dev Psychol

Group-administered questionnaires were used to examine the social judgments of 139 9th- and 12th-grade students regarding drug usage. Subjects were divided into groups on the basis of self-re-ported drug use. Low-drug-use and high-drug-use subjects of both grades tended to view drug use as a matter of personal discretion or prudence rather than an issue of morality or social convention. High-drug-use subjects were more likely than low-drug-use subjects to view drug use as a personal rather than prudential issue and to view the behavior as less harmful and less wrong. They were also more likely to view themselves as the only authority with regard to drug use and less likely to view parents or the law as authorities. There were no significant age effects. Over the past several years, a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal attributes have been identified as correlates of adolescent drug use (Kandel, 1980). For example, recent studies have shown that it is possible to predict drug use from specific personality characteristics that are identifiable at as early as 3 years of age (Block, Block, & Keyes, 1988). Although several of these personality characteristics have been conceptualized a