The 9th through 12th grade students who participated in this investigation consisted of 548 males and 640 females enrolled in two public school systems in each of four mid-sized metropolitan areas. A questionnaire, Attitude, Opinion and Behavior Survey for Secondary Students, was used as the data-collection instrument. The survey consisted of 82 items within 10 subscales designed to learn about the attitudes, opinions, and behaviors adolescents exhibit regarding recreational drug use. In examining the perceived risk of smoking marijuana, the scale included the following statements: bad for a person's health, gets a person into trouble, makes a person lose friends, and makes a person perform poorly in school. A log-linear analysis was conducted, using the self-reported level of use of marijuana as the dependent variable. The study found no differences between male and female students regarding perception of risk as it relates to marijuana use. Perception of risk correlated negatively with level of marijuana use. Added to perceived friends' use and problem behaviors, it provides a more parsimonious equation for predicting adolescent use of marijuana. 11 tables and 18 references