NCJ Number
219002
Date Published
October 2006
Length
321 pages
Annotation
This report presents findings from the Monitoring the Future study on substance use and related behaviors from college students and adults ages 19 to 45.
Abstract
Highlights of summary findings from volume II of Monitoring the Future study, specific to college students and substance use include: (1) in the young adult sample, 1 in 16 (6.4 percent) has tried crack by age 29-30; (2) by their late 20s, 6 in every 10 (60 percent) of today's young adults have tried an illicit drug, and a third (34 percent) have tried some illicit drug other than marijuana; (3) today, more than 1 in 7 Americans (16 percent in 2005) has tried cocaine by the age of 30, and 8 percent have tried it by their senior year of high school; (4) among young adults aged 19 to 28, about 4.9 percent smokes marijuana daily in 2005; and (5) it is known from studying previous cohorts that many young adults increase their rates of smoking within a year or so after they leave high school. Monitoring the Future, which is now in its 31st year, has become one of the Nation's most relied upon sources of information on changes taking place in licit and illicit psychoactive drug use among American adolescents, college students, young adults, and more recently, middle-aged adults. The Monitoring the Future study consists of two major components: the ongoing surveys of American secondary school students conducted in schools and the ongoing panel studies of high school graduates from the last 29 graduating classes conducted by mail. This volume, the second in a two-volume set from the Monitoring the Future study, provides findings on the substance use and related behaviors from the panel respondents. It also contains findings on follow-up respondents' attitudes and beliefs about drugs, as well as on several particularly salient dimensions of their social environments. Tables, figures, and index