(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Illinois teens are boozing it up at a rate twice the national average. Doug Smith, of the University of Illinois School of Social Work‘s Center for Prevention Research and Development, conducts the bi-annual Illinois Youth Survey. He says he bets on parents and peers to keep kids away from alcohol and other drugs.

“I think for early teens, like 13-15, parental communication is so critical, so we know that parental disapproval and peer disapproval are two of the biggest predictors of substance use among young people.”

His findings are that young people are starting later.

“There’s just a clear trend,” Smith adds, from eighth grade to tenth grade to twelfth grade” in saying “it’s okay to use. So substance use is more acceptable among twelfth-graders than it is among eighth-graders.”

But the survey shows 13.7 percent of teenagers in Illinois report they drank within the previous thirty days. The national average is 6.9 percent.