NCJ Number
138823
Journal
Milbank Quarterly Volume: 69 Issue: 3 Dated: (1991) Pages: 365-414
Date Published
1991
Length
50 pages
Annotation
Official statistics and national surveys form the basis of this description of the patterns of drug abuse and addiction in the United States, trends over time, and variations among population subgroups.
Abstract
Data sources include the Drug Abuse Warning Network, the Drug Use Forecasting program, and surveys sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute of Mental Health. Results revealed that in 1990, almost half of high school seniors had experimented with one illicit drug and 37 percent of the population aged 12 and over had done so. Among high school seniors, 19.1 percent smoked cigarettes daily, 3.7 percent used alcohol daily, and 2.2 percent used marijuana daily. The use of illicit drugs peaks in the late teens and early twenties. For most substances, a higher proportion of men than women are users. Declines in use began in 1980 for most illicit drugs and in 1985 for cocaine, except for disadvantaged groups such as school dropouts and unemployed persons. The relationships between ethnicity and drug behavior are complex and appear to be changing rapidly. Preliminary data for 1991 confirm the important link between drug behavior and attitudes. Tables and 87 references