how many teenagers are there in the usa, anyway?

on the other night's local news, this was scrolling across the bottom of the screen: new survey reveals that 3 million american teenagers use cough syrup & cold medicine to get high. if this surprises you, then you clearly are out of contact with teenagers. the only thing that surprises me is that as many as 3 million admitted to this. i am confident more than 3 million are actually partaking.

i looked up some census data, and the july 2006 estimate for kids aged 10-19 is 41,951,583. that's 41 million, with 21,324,186 of those being in the 14-19 category. so, 3 million is a smallish percentage, eh? yes. i am betting we aren't getting a full rpt. what do you think?