EDITORS: For further information, contact the principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future Study, Lloyd D. Johnston at (734) 763-5043 (office).

ANN ARBOR—This year’s results, based on the 23rd national survey in the ongoing University of Michigan Monitoring the Future study, suggest that while marijuana use continues its longer-term rise among older teens, use of a number of the other illicit drugs has begun to level off.

“For the first time in six years, the use of marijuana and a number of other drugs did not increase among eighth-grade students in this country,” states Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator of the study, “and while use of marijuana may still be rising among 10th- and 12th-graders, their use of a number of other illicit drugs appears to have leveled off.” Further, key attitudes and beliefs about drugs that have proven to be important determinants of use, began to reverse in many cases.

“Normally a ‘no change’ story is pretty uninteresting,” comments Johnston, “but in this case it is welcome news, given that most of the very considerable change in adolescent drug use in the first half of this decade has been upward.”

Johnston and his colleagues, Jerald G. Bachman and Patrick M. O’Malley, senior research scientists at the U-M Institute for Social Research, are reporting the results of the 1997 survey they conducted of 51,000 eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students located in 429 secondary schools nationwide. The samples are nationally representative of all students at each of the three grade levels in private and public schools in the coterminous United States. Twelfth-graders have been surveyed annually since 1975 and eighth- and 10th-graders since 1991. This work has been supported since its inception under a series of research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health.

Until this year students in all three grades had shown substantial increases in their use of most of the illicit drugs—particularly marijuana. Now the use of a number of drugs has leveled off. Because the findings sometimes differ among grades and among drugs, each of the major classes of drugs is discussed separately.

Marijuana. After six years of steady increases, marijuana use leveled in 1997 among eighth-graders. Among 10th-graders there has been a deceleration in the rate of increase, although the proportion reporting any marijuana use in the prior 12 months (annual prevalence) still showed some increase (a statistically insignificant rise of 1.2 percentage points). There is some evidence of deceleration among 12th-graders, as well, with observed increases in 1996 and 1997 considerably lower than those observed in 1993, 1994, and 1995.

“During the early 1990s we saw a considerable decline in the proportions of students reporting marijuana use as dangerous,” Johnston notes, “but the erosion in these attitudes began to slow a couple of years ago, which is probably why we are now seeing this leveling, or at least deceleration in students’ actual use of marijuana.” (Figure 3.)

This year for the first time in six years, there was an increase among eighth-graders in disapproval of marijuana use, and there was little further erosion in these attitudes among the older students (Table 9). There was no change in the reported availability of marijuana at any of the grade levels in 1997. (In fact, there was no change in reported availability for most of the other drugs [Table 11], as well.)

Hallucinogens. After several years of steady increase, the reported use of LSD, and of all other hallucinogens taken as a class, leveled in 1997 in all three grades. Consistent with this finding, the degree of risk young people reported to be associated with these drugs began to level a year earlier in all grades. Similarly, the proportion of students expressing disapproval of the use of these drugs has been fairly level since 1996, in comparison to the decline in disapproval that occurred earlier in the 1990s.

The proportion of 1997 students reporting any use of LSD in the 12 months prior to the survey was 3.2 percent, 6.7 percent, and 8.4 percent for grades 8, 10, and 12, respectively. For other hallucinogens the rates were 1.8 percent, 3.3 percent, and 4.6 percent.

Inhalants. The use of inhalants, substances such as glues and aerosols, rose steadily in the early 1990s, but use peaked two years ago and has declined slightly since. The proportion of young people who said they saw a great risk of harm associated with the use of these drugs increased appreciably two years ago among eighth- and 10th-graders (these questions are not asked in grade 12); and disapproval of use has been rising more gradually over the past two years.

Inhalants are more popular among younger teens than older teens. The proportions in 1997 reporting any use in the prior 12 months were 12 percent, 9 percent, and 7 percent in grades 8, 10, and 12, respectively.

Crystal methamphetamine (Ice). Only 12th-graders are asked about the use of “ice,” which, like crack, is often smoked or burned in rock form. Ice use had been rising between 1992-96. Use leveled in 1997, after perceived risk had leveled a year earlier.

The proportion of 1997 12th-graders reporting any use of ice in the prior 12 months was 2.3 percent, or nearly one in every 40 students.

MDMA (Ecstasy). The use of MDMA or “ecstasy” has been included in the survey of secondary school students only since 1996. No increase was seen in 1997 in any grade. This very likely follows a period of increase in use, judging by the longer-term trend data available from college students and young adults, who also participate in the Monitoring the Future study (data reported elsewhere).

In 1997 the proportions of students reporting any use of ecstasy in the prior 12 months were 2.3 percent, 3.9 percent, and 4.0 percent among eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders.

Stimulants. The use of amphetamine stimulants rose gradually in all three grades during the early 1990s. This year, use leveled in the lower grades, though use may have continued its gradual rise in grade 12. Perceived risk and disapproval are asked only of 12th-graders for this class of drugs, and both have stabilized following an earlier period of decline.

The proportions of students in 1997 reporting any use of stimulants in the prior 12 months are 8 percent, 12 percent, and 10 percent for grades 8, 10, and 12.

Cocaine Powder. The use of cocaine powder inched up steadily in all three grade levels in the first half of the 1990s. While none of the 1996-97 changes reaches statistical significance, use appears to continue to be rising at about the same rate in 10th- and 12th-grades, but to have leveled off in eighth-grade. Among the eighth-graders perceived risk leveled this year and disapproval of use actually increased, both after an earlier period of erosion in these attitudes.

The proportions of 1997 students reporting any use of cocaine powder in the prior 12 months are 2.2 percent, 4.1 percent, and 5.0 percent in grades 8, 10, and 12, respectively.

Crack Cocaine. The use of crack rose very modestly at all three grade levels in the first half of the 1990s. In 1997 use leveled in grades 8 and 10 and rose only 0.3 percent (not statistically significant) in 12th-grade.

In 1997 the annual prevalence rates for crack were 1.7 percent, 2.2 percent, and 2.4 percent among eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders.

Heroin. The rates of heroin use in the student population are quite low, as would be expected, but they nevertheless have risen significantly in all three grade levels during the 1990s. According to the investigators, it seems highly likely that taking heroin by non-traditional means—namely, by snorting or smoking, rather than by injecting it—has played a role in the rise in heroin use. More students now indicate using heroin in these ways than say that they have injected it.

The gradual increase in heroin use may be continuing in 1997 in the upper grades: while too small to be statistically significant, the changes are similar in size to the increases in earlier years. However, use in eighth-grade has leveled off and may even have declined.

“A positive note on heroin,” adds Johnston, “is that more students over the past two years have been reporting its use as dangerous. This contrasts to an erosion in those beliefs through the first half of the nineties. A change in these attitudes usually is a precursor of a change in actual use—young people are less likely to use a drug they see as dangerous.”

Alcohol. Alcohol use remains very high among American young people, but has not changed much in the past few years. (On some of the measures of alcohol use among 12th-graders, there appears to be some increase in 1997, but this is largely due to the fact that two large schools with unusually low drinking rates cycled out of the sample last year. Therefore, the investigators are treating it as a statistical artifact.)

“Insofar as there has been any change in alcohol use in the nineties,” comments Johnston, “it has been in the form of a very gradual upward drift in the very low proportions who say that they have been drunk frequently (20 or more times in the prior 30 days)—these rates are 0.2 percent, 0.6 percent, and 2.0 percent in 1997 in grades 8, 10, and 12, respectively—or in the much larger proportions who indicated recent binge drinking.” (Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks in a row on at least one occasion in the prior two weeks.) In 1997 some 15 percent, 25 percent, and 31 percent of eighth-, 10th-, and 12th-graders, respectively, indicated such binge drinking and these rates are slightly higher than they were in the early 1990s (Table 1c).

Consistent with these changes, the proportions of students seeing daily drinking and binge drinking as dangerous declined some in the 1990s, as did the proportions disapproving of such behaviors (Tables 7 and 9). However, in 1997 these attitudes began to firm up among the eighth-graders.

“It’s a complicated story this year,” admits Johnston, “because not all drugs are moving in the same direction and not all grade levels are showing exactly the same changes. But the bottom line is that the longer-term rises in the use of most drugs, which began in the early 1990s among American teen-agers, appear to have stalled or at least decelerated; in addition, for most drugs important underlying attitudes and beliefs have stopped eroding.

“That still leaves us with unacceptably high levels of teen drug use, however, with some usage rates two to three times what they were in the early 1990s. Further, new drugs are continually being introduced with alluring false promises, the adverse effects of which are seldom known when they first arrive on the scene.

“The country has begun to mobilize on this issue in the past few years, but clearly the job is far from complete. Indeed, there will always be an incoming wave of American youngsters who start out naive about the consequences of drug use, and who are growing up in a period when they will know about many drugs and will have fairly easy access to them. If we expect them to reject illicit drug use, we must educate and persuade them with the help of many sectors: the family, school, community, entertainment, media, and national leadership. The more consistent the messages from all of these sectors, the more effective our society will be at preventing the many tragic consequences of drug use among our children.

“I hope that we have learned from the relapse in the drug epidemic in the 1990s that drug use among kids is a persistent and recurring problem—one which needs consistent and unremitting attention. It is a long-term problem, which means that we must institutionalize prevention efforts so that they will be there for the long-term and for each new generation of American children.

“Otherwise, what we have termed ‘generational forgetting’ is likely to occur again, with a new wave of children growing up not learning what their predecessors learned about the consequences of drug use. We believe generational forgetting contributed to the relapse in teen drug use we are now seeing in the 1990s, since young people’s beliefs about the dangers of drugs eroded considerably. Ironically, the risk of generational forgetting is greatest when the epidemic subsides, and young people have less opportunity to observe the adverse consequences of drug use first hand. The long and substantial decline in illicit drug use between the late 1970s and the early 1990s created just such a situation.”

The study, titled “Monitoring the Future,” is also widely known as the National High School Senior Survey. It has been conducted under a series of investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Surveys have been carried out each year since 1975 by the U-M Survey Research Center. In 1997, the seniors comprised about 16,000 students nationwide, selected to be representative of all seniors in the continental United States. They completed self-administered questionnaires given to them in the classrooms by U-M personnel in the spring of the year. Beginning in 1991, similar surveys of nationally representative samples of eighth- and 10th-graders have been conducted annually. The 1997 eighth-grade sample contained about 19,000 students, and the 10th-grade sample contained about 16,000 students. In all, approximately 51,000 students in 429 public and private secondary schools were surveyed in 1997.

http://www.isr.umich.edu/src/mtf/

Figure 3Table 9Table 1c7Survey Research Center