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That's pretty disingenuous. 23 million Americans have used drugs/alcohol to the point of needing treatment: http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/08/study-22-million-am... That's 7% of the population, including children under 12. Take the pre-peer-pressure group out and it starts to look more like Russian Roulette. I'd hardly call that a risk worth taking.

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From your link, that was the number that the study authors estimated needed treatment. However only about 11% actually got treatment, and the #1 cause of not getting treatment is that they did not think they needed it.

There undoubtably was a lot of denial involved. But without knowing more about the biases of the authors, there is a real possibility that they are being overly quick to assume that people need treatment when someone else may conclude that they do not.

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