NCJ Number
211292
Date Published
April 2005
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This report summarizes the findings of the Partnership Attitude Tracking Study (PATS) 2004, which annually tracks consumer attitudes toward illegal drugs; the report focuses on the self-reports of the teen sample (grades 7 through 12).
Abstract
The PATS' focus on attitudes is based in the empirically driven belief that attitudes toward illegal drugs--notably perception of risk linked to their use and perception of social disapproval of their use--correlate with consumption of illegal drugs. The data for this report were collected from March through June 2004. Adolescents in grades 7 through 12 were surveyed, with an oversampling of African-American and Hispanic American populations. Adolescents completed self-administered questionnaires under the supervision of trained interviewers. Based on the attitudes expressed in the PATS questionnaire, adolescent drug use continues to decline from the peak of the mid-1990s. The two exceptions are inhalants and prescription and over-the-counter medicine abuse. Increasingly, teens are getting high through the intentional abuse of medications, notably opiate-based prescription "painkillers." In 2004, 18 percent of teen respondents reported nonmedical use of Vicodin, 10 percent reported abuse of OxyContin, and 10 percent reported abuse of Ritalin or Adderall without a doctor's prescription. This pattern is similar to that found in 2003. Nine percent of respondents reported using a nonprescription cough medicine to get high. Between 1998 and 2004, there were significant improvements in teens' attitudes toward and use of marijuana, and ecstasy use appeared to be less prevalent. The belief that using inhalants can kill you declined significantly from 2003, from 71 percent to 66 percent. Overall measures on cocaine and crack have remained stable for the last decade, while perceptions of risk in using methamphetamine increased slightly but not significantly from last year. Extensive tables and figures