National Alcohol and Drug Use Statistics

In 1997, the University of Michigan conducted a national survey of 51,000 eighth through twelfth grade students from 429 public and private secondary schools. The survey, entitled Monitoring the Future, asked questions about lifetime drug use, usage in the previous thirty days, daily usage, environmental and social settings, and usage perception. This survey was similar to that given to the Maine students. The most alarming statistic from the study involved excessive alcohol usage, defined as five or more alcoholic drinks in a row in the previous two weeks.

Selected Results from the National Survey

Cigarettes

• Nationally, nineteen percent (19%) of all eighth graders and twenty-nine-point-eight percent (29.8%) of tenth graders had smoked cigarettes in the previous thirty days.
• Nine percent (9%) of all eighth graders, eighteen percent (18%) of tenth graders, and twenty-five percent (25%) of twelfth graders smoked daily.
• During the period from 1992 to 1996, the proportion of eighth graders who reported smoking daily in the thirty-day period preceding the survey increased by half, from seven percent (7%) in 1992 to ten-point-four percent (10.4%) in 1996. In 1997, this rate fell to nine percent (9%). Among tenth graders, daily smoking also rose by half, from twelve-point-three percent (12.3%) in 1992 to eighteen-point-three percent (18.3%) in 1996, and was unchanged in 1997.
• At the twelfth grade level, daily smoking rose less in proportional terms between 1992 and 1996, from seventeen-point-two percent (17.2%) to twenty-two-point-two percent (22.2%), but rose significantly in 1997 to twenty-four-point-six percent (24.6%); that represented a forty-three percent (43%) increase in daily smoking for twelfth graders over a five year period.

• Fourteen percent (14%) of eighth graders, twenty-five-point-one percent (25.1%) of tenth graders, and thirty-one-point-three (31.3%) of twelfth graders drank to excess routinely.

• Twenty-three percent (23%) of eighth graders, forty-two-point-three percent (42.3%) of tenth graders, and forty-nine-point-six percent (49.6%) of twelfth graders had smoked marijuana.

• Five percent (5%) of eighth graders, nine-point-five percent (9.5%) of tenth graders, and thirteen-point-six percent (13.6%) of twelfth graders had experimented with LSD.

• Four percent (4%) of eighth graders, seven percent (7%) of tenth graders, and eight-point-seven percent (8.7%) of twelfth graders had used some sort of cocaine.