Monday, December 14, 2009

2009 High School Drug Use Study Released: Monitoring the Future

The Monitoring the Future study of drug use among 8th, 10th and 12th graders was released today. The government's press release was balanced, highlighting the successes in reduced cigarette smoking and use of methamphetamine, and noting that declines in marijuana use that had been steady for a decade seemed to have stalled.

Fortunately students perceive that it is harder for them to obtain drugs, especially cocaine, crack, ecstasy, sedatives, tranquilizers and steroids.

Lifetime use of various illicit drugs continues to go down. For 12th grade marijuana use it was down 42.0 percent, down from 49.7 percent in 1999, but still higher than the early and mid-1990s.

Current use of marijuana (last 30 days) is 6.5 percent for 8th grade, 15.9 percent for 10th grade and 20.6 percent for 12th grade -- all slight increases over the past five years.

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