The decrease in perceived risk began in 1990, two years before marijuana use by adolescents began to increase in 1992. Teenagers in California do not substantially perceive marijuana as less harmful than their peers throughout the nation. Interestingly they report that marijuana is less easy to obtain than their peers in the rest of the nation. Youth who currently smoke cigarettes were about twelve times as likely to use illicit drugs and 23 times as likely to consume alcohol heavily as nonsmoking youths. Declines in past month use of cigarettes have been steady among adults over 26.
Whites smoke somewhat more than blacks.
And past month use of cocaine has dropped even more dramatically from its high of 5.7 million in 1985 to 1.5 million in 1997. These numbers represent the hard-core, high consumption users. Those who report using crack in the past year has consistently been twice the number of monthly crack users. As a percentage, past month use of cocaine by blacks was more frequent than that of whites, but whites are overwhelmingly the majority of cocaine consumers. Whites between 17 and 25 use cocaine much more than blacks.