A new report by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs shows that teenage girls in the United States are significantly more likely to have used illegal drugs at least once in their lifetime in comparison to their peers in most European countries.
The report found that 35 percent of 15- and 16-year-old girls in the United States had used illegal drugs. Among major European nations, only France and the Czech Republic had higher rates of illegal drug use among teenage girls.
The rate of illegal drug use for teenage girls in the United States was nearly 12 times as high as for teenage girls in Norway. Illegal drug use by teenage girls in the U.S. was more than three times higher than the rates in Finland, Sweden, Serbia, Romania, Iceland, Greece, and Albania.
The high rate of illegal drug use among teenage girls in the United States was only slightly lower than the rate for teenage boys in the U.S. In most European countries, the rate of illegal drug use was significantly higher for teenage boys than it was for teenage girls.