Drug Poll: Parents Face Communications Gap

Most parents of teenagers say they’ve had a serious talk with their child about illegal drugs, but a majority of teenagers say that’s not so, according to a national poll.

In the ABC News-Washington Post poll released Monday, 62 percent of parents say their teenagers feel very comfortable talking with them about drugs, but only 45 percent of teenagers say so.

While 52 percent of parents rate drugs in the schools as a crisis or serious problem, only 34 percent of teenagers do.

Fully 85 percent of parents say they have had a serious talk their child about drugs. But children may not have heard it that way, because only 45 percent of the teenagers in the poll recall a serious talk, ABC reported.

Most teens who did have a drug talk say it helped, and half say it helped a lot.

The poll was taken by phone Feb. 20-24 among random national samples of 527 teenagers and 618 parents of teenagers, most from the same household. The margin of sampling error is 4.5 points.