Teen abuse of cigarettes, alcohol, painkillers declining, new survey shows
Fears that teenage drug abuse is spiraling out of control just went up in smoke.
A new survey shows that use of cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription painkillers among teens declined in the past year. Meanwhile, teen marijuana use appears to have leveled off, even as more states legalize its recreational use for adults.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) released the 2014 "Monitoring the Future" (MTF) survey Tuesday, revealing that a general two-decade trend of declining substance abuse has continued.
“This is some of the best news in the past five years,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIDA, said in an interview with Yahoo News." There are serious decreases in the patterns of drug use."
The institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has been monitoring the drug use and attitudes of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders since 1975. It is noteworthy for its size: 41,551 students from 377 public and private schools participated.
Alcohol use is declining gradually across all grades. Past-month use among eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders fell from 10.2, 25.7, and 39.2 percent respectively in 2013 to 9.0, 23.5, and 37.4 percent this year. Abuse of over-the-counter and prescription drugs also continued its downward trend.
Over the past five years, daily cigarette smoking has decreased by nearly 50 percent in all grades: from 2.7 percent to 1.4 percent for eighth-graders and 6.3 percent to 3.2 percent for 10th-graders, for instance.
“We have seen this consistently coming down,” Volkow said. “We thought it would rise a little bit, but it has continued to decrease — really, really dramatically.”
On the other hand, use of electronic cigarettes in the past month — measured in the survey for the first time this year — was alarmingly high among teens: 8.7 percent for eighth-graders, 16.2 percent for 10th-graders, and 17.1 percent for 12th-graders.
“It’s very likely that — in some instances — kids who would have smoked tobacco may be smoking e-cigarettes,” she said.
The study shows that figures for students who smoked marijuana in the past month remain steady: 6.5 percent for eighth-graders, 16.6 percent for 10th-graders, and 21.2 percent for 12th-graders.
Nearly 6 percent of high school seniors reported daily cannabis use.
“We have not seen it going up, but we see steady, very high levels of marijuana use in this country,” she said. “But they have not gone up, and that of course was one of our concerns with changes in policy and attitudes.”
The majority of 12th-graders do not think occasional use of marijuana is harmful — only 16.4 percent say it would put them at great risk, compared with 27.4 percent five years ago.
Still, 56.7 percent of seniors disapprove of occasional marijuana smoking, according to the study.
Researchers at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor conducted the survey, which was funded by NIDA.
