Study results released by a team of medical researchers yesterday show that American pop songs are awash with lyrics about drugs and alcohol.

After reviewing the top 279 songs of 2005, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine concluded that a third of the songs had explicit references to substance abuse, and two thirds of these references portrayed drugs, alcohol and tobacco in a positive light by linking them with sex and partying.

Reuters reports:

They calculated that with Americans aged 15 to 18 listening to 2.4 hours of music daily, they hear 84 musical references to substance use a day and more than 30,000 a year. Certain genres contained more references than others—for example, rap and country music far more so than pop.

The researchers selected the 279 most popular songs from 2005 using charts from Billboard magazine, and included songs from genres like country, pop, R&B, rap and rock.

Of those songs, 33 percent contained explicit references and 42 percent had some kind of substance abuse reference. Seventy-seven percent of rap songs tracked in the study contained such references, along with 36 percent of country songs, 20 percent of songs classified as “R&B/hip-hop,” 14 percent of rock songs and 9 percent of pop songs. Alcohol and marijuana were the most common references found, with tobacco more rarely mentioned.

There is a longstanding debate over whether the state of such pop culture drives cultural norms or reflects them. There is surely truth to both arguments, but there is no question that the glorification of such behaviors in a medium consumed so voraciously by our youth contributes to the problem.

Parents should exercise authority in their children’s lives in this area. We should strive to protect them from negative influences where possible, and instruct them on how to make wise choices in media consumption as they grow toward adulthood. We also need to supply them with the facts about the consequences of wrong behaviors so routinely depicted in a positive light in popular music.