BY THE TIME a teenager turns nineteen there is a 98 percent chance that he or she has tried at least one drug (including alcohol). It's hard to say why teenagers try drugs. Sometimes they don't even know why they do it. If a person asked ten teenagers at a party why they were getting high, that person would probably get ten different explanations. A lot of the time teenagers don't even recognize the paths that led them to drug abuse. Drug abuse is usually the result of a problem, an outside influence, or the combination of these. There are many reasons why teenagers decide to use drugs, but there are specific influences that appear time and again.

Experimentation

Part of being a teenager is experiencing new things, taking risks, and rebelling against authority. According to Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, president...