[Youth, friendship and use of drugs]

The relationship between self-reported friendships and the use of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis was investigated in a study of 1.968 adolescents aged 12-19 from the greater Oslo area. Bivariate analyses showed that the adolescents who reported the closest friendships also had the highest consumption of all three drugs. Multivariate analyses were used to "control" for the friends' use of drugs. However, the effect of the friendships still remained positively correlated with the use of drugs. The findings indicate that experimental use of the highly prevalent drugs in particular is common in active and social groups of adolescents.