America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007
Illicit Drug Use
Drug use by adolescents can have immediate as well as long-term health and social consequences. Cocaine use is linked with health problems that range from eating disorders, to disability, to death from heart attacks and strokes.95 Marijuana use poses both health and cognitive risks, particularly for damage to pulmonary functions as a result of chronic use.96, 97 Hallucinogens can affect brain chemistry and result in problems with learning new information and memory.98 As is the case with alcohol use and smoking, illicit drug use is a risk-taking behavior that has potentially serious negative consequences.
Indicator BEH3: Percentage of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students who have used illicit drugs in the previous 30 days by grade, 1980–2006
NOTE: Use of "any illicit drug" includes any use of marijuana, LSD, other hallucinogens, crack, other cocaine, or heroin, or any use of other narcotics, amphetamines, barbiturates, or tranquilizers not under a doctor's orders. For 8th- and 10th-graders, the use of other narcotics and barbiturates has been excluded because these younger respondents appear to overreport use (perhaps because they include the use of nonprescription drugs in their answers).
SOURCE: National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Monitoring the Future Survey.
- Illicit drug use in the past 30 days remained stable from 2005 to 2006. Eight percent of 8th-graders, 17 percent of 10th-graders, and 22 percent of 12th-graders reported use in the past 30 days in 2006.
- Eight percent of both male and female 8th-graders reported using illicit drugs in the past 30 days. Among 10th graders, it was 18 percent for males and 15 percent for females. Among 12th-graders, 23 percent of males and 20 percent of females reported illicit drug use in the past 30 days.
- Since recent peaks in the mid- to late-1990s, past-30-day illicit drug use has declined from a peak of 15 percent for 8th-graders and 23 percent for 10th-graders in 1996, and 26 percent for 12th-graders in 1997.
95 Blanken, A.J. (1993). Measuring use of alcohol and other drugs among adolescents. Public Health Reports, 108 (Supplement 1).
96 National Institute on Drug Abuse. (2004). Marijuana: Facts parents need to know (NIH Publication No. 04-4036). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
97 Pope Jr., H.G., and Yurgelun-Todd, D. (1996). The residual cognitive effects of heavy marijuana use in college students. Journal of the American Medical Association, 275 (7).
98 U.S. Public Health Service. (1993). Measuring the health behavior of adolescents: The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and recent reports on high-risk adolescents. Public Health Reports, 108 (Supplement 1).