American youth seem to be getting the message that drug use isn't good for them. Over the past two years (2001-2003), marijuana use among teens fell by 11%. Tobacco, ecstasy, and LSD use also declined.
According to John Walters, director of the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, "Fewer teens are using drugs because of the deliberate and serious messages they have received about the dangers of drugs from their parents, leaders, and prevention efforts like our National Anti-Drug Media Campaign."
Lloyd Johnson of the University of Michigan, the lead researcher for the Monitoring the Future survey, said "It is quite possible that the media campaign has had its intended effect." However, he went on to say, "You put these facts together and it looks like (the campaign) is having an effect. It's a logical deduction on our part; it hasn't been proved empirically."
Use of all illicit drugs among teens fell 11% from 2001 to 2003. In 2001, 19.4% of 8th, 10th, and 12th-graders admitted to drug use. In 2003, only 17.3% of them did. Alcohol use fell by 7% from 2001 to 2002, but remained steady in 2003. Tobacco use also fell, from 20.3% to 16.6%.
Less encouraging are the figures on use of cocaine, club drugs, and narcotics (other than heroin). The use of these drugs remained unchanged from 2001 to 2003. Teen use of powerful prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin increased slightly.
More worrisome is that drug use by younger teens seems to be increasing. "I'm worried about getting another generation of kids who have not heard about drugs, because when you have things like the war in Iraq and 9/11, you don't hear much about drugs," said Johnson.
He goes on, "The 8th-graders have been harbingers of change observed later in the upper grades, so the fact that they are no longer showing declines in their use of a number of drugs could mean that the declines now being observed in the upper grades also will come to an end soon."
Marsha Rosenbaum, Ph.D., director of the Safety First project of the Drug Policy Alliance, isn't impressed with these results. She said, "Teenage use of alcohol and other drugs is cyclical, and has gone up and down and then up again and down again in the 25-year history of the Monitoring the Future survey." She continued, "While we'd all like to see a reduction in drug use among teens, it is a mistake to evaluate the success of American drug policy simply on current prevalence, when we continue to see alarming rates of death, disease and crime resulting from our misguided War on Drugs."
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