Host: How does approval or censure influence teen drinking?

Judith Welles Cousins: Censure or approval effects teen alcohol and drug use. In that, if a teenager has a positive expectation, if a teenager knows or believes that something positive will happen if he is using that drug that or using that glass of whatever alcohol it is, he is much more likely to use. If on the other hand, a teenager has a sense of disapproval, either from their families or from society or from a particular faith group that he is involved in, if he has that sense that this something negative will happen if I use, something negative will happen to me, something negative will happen to my family, whatever the case might be, he is less likely to use and what's happened, what we seen over the past, in maybe 15 or 20 years is that the sense of disapproval and the sense that something positive is going to happen, it's okay to use, has gone up. So and the disapproval might for someone who in my age group certainly when we were growing up, the sense of, if you are using or you are drinking or you are drinking too soon, the negative disapproval of that was really high both in our families and society. So we were less likely to use because of that and today it's different and there is much more in a sense, permission in some respects to use and a much higher expectation that something good will happen.

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