Illicit drug use down among teens, prescription drug use remains high

Updated 9:30 AM January 10, 2007

Illicit drug use down among teens,
prescription drug use remains high

By Joe Serwach
News Service

The percentage of U.S. adolescents who use illicit drugs or drink alcohol continued a decade-long drop in 2006, while daily smoking among young people in their early and middle teens has stopped declining after a decade of substantial improvement.

Those were among the findings of the 32nd annual Monitoring the Future survey of 50,000 eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders in more than 400 schools nationwide.

U-M researcher Lloyd Johnston is the principal investigator of the study. The findings based on the 2006 survey results will be published in a forthcoming report. In addition to Johnston, the study team and authors of that report are Patrick O'Malley, Jerald Bachman and John Schulenberg. All are research professors at the Institute for Social Research and are either social or developmental psychologists.

The latest survey reveals that a fifth (21 percent) of today's eighth-graders, over a third (36 percent) of 10th-graders, and about half (48 percent) of all 12th-graders have taken an illicit drug.

Among eighth-graders, 30-day prevalence of alcohol use has declined by more than one-third since its peak level in 1996. Among 10th-and 12th-graders, the proportional declines from recent peaks have been smaller—one-sixth among 10th-graders since 2000 and one-seventh among 12th-graders since 1997.

Since reaching a peak in the mid-1990s, current daily smoking has fallen by half among 12th-graders, and by more than half among those in eighth and 10th grades. In 2006 no further decline in daily smoking was observed at eighth or 10th grade. Further declines did occur at 12th grade

The proportion saying they used any illicit drug in the prior 12 months continued to decline, and the rates (15 percent, 29 percent, and 37 percent in eighth, 10th, and 12th grades, respectively) are now down from recent peak levels in the mid-1990s by about one-third in eighth grade, one-quarter in 10th grade and one-eighth in 12th grade.

The declines since last year are relatively small, and only statistically significant for the three grades combined.

Marijuana, by far the most widely used of the various illicit drugs, showed the fifth consecutive year of decreased use among 10th- and 12th- grade students, but recent declines have stopped among eighth-graders. Older students now are showing the greatest decreases in use.

The proportion using any illicit drug other than marijuana—such as hallucinogens, cocaine, heroin or nonprescribed stimulants, sedatives, tranquillizers, or other narcotics—showed very little further decline this year, but the greatest improvement occurred among 12th-graders.

Ecstasy use increased slightly, while use of prescription-type drugs like narcotics (including OxyContin and Vicodin), tranquilizers, and sedatives was down only slightly from recent peaks.

A new question for 2006 on the use of over-the-counter cough or cold medicines explicitly to get high showed that about one in every 25 eighth-graders abused cough or cold medications fairly recently, as did about one in every 14 12th-graders.

In 2006 declines leveled off in the prevalence of respondents who reported being drunk at least once in the prior month among all three groups.

The researchers reported that daily and monthly smoking was down for the groups surveyed, and attribute the continued decline to public debate about the hazards of smoking and tobacco company business practices, national and state anti-tobacco advertising campaigns, banning of billboard cigarette advertising and higher tobacco taxes and prices.

Researchers also believe diversion of money to states from a lawsuit against tobacco companies from anti-smoking efforts could be contributing to the leveling off of declines in smoking. Though they report that the perceived risk of smoking has held level among 10th-graders the past two years, disapproval of cigarette smoking still is rising and is at very high levels among teens.

Smokeless tobacco use continued to decline among 12th-graders but held steady in the lower grades, while the popularity of flavored cigarettes (kreteks and bidis) appears to have faded.

Monitoring the Future has been funded under a series of competing, investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (which will publish the survey findings in a forthcoming volume), part of the National Institutes of Health. Surveys of nationally representative samples of American high school seniors were begun in 1975.

Illicit drug use down among teens, prescription drug use remains high

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Illicit drug use down among teens,
prescription drug use remains high