More teens smoking pot than cigarettes

More teens are saying no to cigarettes, but they're still smoking, turning instead to marijuana. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 23 percent of high school students admitted they smoked pot recently. Only 19 percent said they smoked cigarettes. This is the first time more teens have reported smoking pot rather than cigarettes. In the state of South Carolina, marijuana use is a little higher than the national average - 24 percent of teens have used it at least once in the past 30 days.

Prevention specialists say that may be opening teens up to bigger problems. Teens may be putting out their cigarette butts, but they aren't necessarily putting down their lighters, ditching tobacco for marijuana. Some of the public say it's not something they want to see. "I'm not surprised at all, kids are getting in a lot more trouble these days," said Heather Engelman. Some fault parenting while others say it comes down to ease of access. "To get cigarettes, they have to go the store and show ID and get checked," said Tiffany Boccheio.

"They buy it off the street from who knows." A prevention specialist at the Phoenix Substance Abuse Center says the decrease in smokers shows their crackdown on selling tobacco to minors is working, but teens are now turning elsewhere. "Unfortunately, marijuana is not that hard to come by, availability is the issue," said Prevention Specialist Matt Smith. Health experts say they're happy to see the cigarette numbers go down, but say marijuana is a gateway drug with serious legal ramifications.

The Phoenix Center says pot is their number one referral, but until they can get the same amount of resources spent on keeping teens away from pot as have been spent on cigarette prevention, it's a trend that will be hard to change. "This shows a need for more prevention and work in education, you'll only reach a small percentage that will be charged and convicted," said Smith.