Peer Pressure Isn’T Always A Deciding Factor

Mon., Nov. 13, 2000

Jack Nelson, Mt. Spokane

“Hey, any you guys got a cigarette?”

This is a phrase I hear almost daily.

I hear it from almost everybody. Some people you would expect, and some you wouldn’t.

Why do these people smoke? Why do others do drugs?

If you asked an adult, he or she likely would have one answer: peer pressure. But how far will peer pressure make a teen go?

Adults say it will make a teen do anything from cheating on homework to robbing a 7-11. But I think teens know better. Just because adults may have done things in their teen years that they blame on peer pressure doesn’t mean we will, too.

I’ll be the last to deny that some of us do things under pressure from peers. But I believe that most teens today are free-thinking enough to know whether we want to smoke or steal or do other things of that nature.

I haven’t given in to peer pressure once. I don’t plan to, either. I am one of today’s teens, and I know nobody can make me do anything I don’t want to.

Adults, police officers and D.A.R.E. officers don’t give us enough credit. The images we were shown as sixth-graders of five high schoolers cornering the third-grader after school and shoving a joint in his mouth are grossly exaggerated. They ignore those of us who resist peer pressure.

So, I suggest to these adults that they stop with their pressure and let us make choices.

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