The use of illicit drugs like marijuana and ecstasy among US teens has increased according to a government-sponsored survey, raising concerns about whether the current debates on drug legalization may be sending the wrong message to young Americans.
The survey found that due mostly to an increase in marijuana use, the proportion of eighth-graders (children around 13 and 14 years of age) who said they had used an illicit drug in the past year has risen from 14.5 per cent in 2009 to 16 per cent in 2010.
The Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey is a classroom survey of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders that is done every year: the results for 2010 were announced today in a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC.
The 2010 MTF survey also found significant increases in use of Ecstasy and that the nonmedical use of prescription drugs remains high among American teenagers.
This year the survey covered 46,482 students from 396 public and private schools. Since 1975 it has included measures on drug, alcohol and cigarette use, and also attitudes towards these substances among 12th-graders across the nation. The survey added eighth and 10th-graders in 1991.
The survey generally asks participants about their drug use in the past month, the past year, and in their lifetime.
The 2010 findings show that on some measures, marijuana use appears to be outstripping use of cigarretes among 12th-graders (the final year of high school, when children graduate at age 17 or 18). 21.4 per cent of this group said they had used marijuana in the past 30 days, compared with 19.2 per cent who said they smoked cigarettes.
The trend toward increasing marijuana use is apparent in most measures across all three grades.
For instance, among eighth-graders, daily use of marijuana rose from 1.0 to 1.2 per cent from 2009 to 2010, among 10th-graders it went up from 2.8 to 3.3 per cent, while among 12th-graders it shot up from 5.2 to 6.1 per cent.
NIDA Director Dr Nora D. Volkow told the press that:
“These high rates of marijuana use during the teen and pre-teen years, when the brain continues to develop, place our young people at particular risk.”
“Not only does marijuana affect learning, judgment, and motor skills, but research tells us that about 1 in 6 people who start using it as adolescents become addicted,” she added.
The 2010 MTF survey also shows a signficant rise in the number of teenagers who say they use Ecstasy (or MDMA). This has gone up from 1.3 per cent of eighth-graders in 2009 to 2.4 per cent in 2010, and 2.7 per cent of 10th-graders in 2009 to 4.7 per cent in 2010.
Another area of concern is that the downward trend in cigarette smoking appears to have reached a plateau in all three grades after several years of steady decline on most measures.
Prompted by an increase in the marketing of alternative forms of tobacco, the 2010 MTF survey for the first time included measures for 12th-graders on use of small cigars (23.1 per cent) and smoking tobacco with a “hookah” pipe (17.1 per cent).
Abuse of prescription drugs shows a mixed picture, but is still a problem, said the report. While abuse of the prescription opiate painkiller Vicodin among 12th-graders appears to have dropped to 8 per cent in 2010 (it was 9.7 per cent in 2009 and the three years before that), nonmedical use of prescription medications remains high. For instance, abuse of OxyContin, another prescription opiate, has remained at around the same at 5.1 per cent for 12th-graders in 2010.
The survey found that many of the teenagers said they are given the prescription drugs by friends and family, and they also buy or steal them.
However, the survey shows binge drinking appears to be continuing its downward trend, with past-year use of flavored alcohol drinks also falling.
The survey also assesses attitudes to drugs. It asks the teenagers to say how harmful they perceive them to be, how easy they are to get hold of, and whether they disapprove of them or not, all indicators of future abuse, said the report.
It is interesting that in line with the reported increased use of marijuana, the survey also detected that fewer 10th-graders view regular smoking of the drug as harmful (in 2009, 59.5 per cent thought it was harmful; in 2010 this figures was down to 57.2 per cent). Among 12th-graders the drop was even steeper, from 52.4 per cent in 2009 to 46.8 per cent in 2010. There was a similar steep drop in disapproval among eighth-graders.
Volkow said we need to find out how the current debate about medical marijuana and legalization of the drug for adults is affecting younger people’s perception of its risks.
“We must also find better ways to communicate to teens that marijuana use can harm their short-term performance as well as their long-term potential,” she urged.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said the increase in teenage drug abuse reflected in the survey was very disappointing:
“Mixed messages about drug legalization, particularly marijuana, may be to blame. Such messages certainly don’t help parents who are trying to prevent kids from using drugs,” he stressed, and urged parents and adults with influence over children to do more to teach young people about the risks and harms of using drugs, including marijuana.
Source: NIDA.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD