Drug use among youth slowly decreasing
Tobacco, alcohol use still the major concerns, researchers say

Drug, alcohol and cigarette use among Indiana youth continued a trend of small but steady declines over the past year, according to an annual survey conducted by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University.

Marijuana use increased slightly. “Not enough to be a great cause of alarm,” said Ruth Gassman, director of the IPRC, a center within the School of Health, Physical Eduction and Recreation. “But enough to say it’s statistically significant.”

Also worthy of notice was an all-time-high rate of students in grade 11 who reported injecting drugs — specifically heroin. The large survey found 1.3 percent of 11th graders reporting injecting a drug within the past month of taking the survey, and that worries the public health researchers for two reasons — the inherent danger of injecting any drug, and the related danger in spreading HIV or hepatitis through the use of shared needles.

Most respondents who reported injecting drugs said they did not share a needle. “Unfortunately, among the 2,602 students who reported injection drug use, at least one out of five reported re-use of needles without cleaning them,” Gassman said in an IU news release.

The 19th Annual Survey of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use by Indiana Children and Adolescents is a massive survey that questioned 182,496 students in 557 public and private schools. The participation rate was outstanding, Gassman said after results were released, with about 34 percent of all Hoosier students responding from 64 percent of school districts in the state.

While the numbers are relevant for both their short-term snapshot interest and long-term trend measurements, Gassman said the figures that always stand out to her are the average ages at which students report experimenting with the so-called gateway drugs of cigarettes, alcohol and marijuana. The average age for the first use of cigarettes was 12.8 years old, 13.1 for alcohol and 13.8 for marijuana.

“Those are numbers that give families a reference rate to pay attention to,” Gassman said. “If those are the average ages in which children experiment, parents need to keep those things in mind.”

Gassman said that while contemporary marijuana use has declined fairly dramatically from the peak years of the late 1970s, the IPRC study only dates back to 1993, showing usage mostly declining with slight upticks now and then. In this year’s survey, monthly use rates increased for students in grades 8, 10 and 11, with increases ranging from 0.5 percent to 1.2 percent.

“Marijuana use can affect the ability to learn and remember information. The more a student uses marijuana the more likely it can affect school performance,” she said in the IU news release.

Gassman credited increased education and awareness for keeping contemporary numbers far below their peaks from a generation ago. She praised after-school programs such as Afternoons Rock in Indiana for reinforcing anti-drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse messages. The once-popular DARE program is no longer used because it is not considered “an evidence-based program.”

“The tobacco retailer inspection program has a huge impact in preventing the sale of tobacco products to youths and that is implemented throughout Indiana,” she said.

While the abuse of medically prescribed stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall remained steady from last year’s survey, it’s still a point of concern for the public health researcher. “They’re so accessible because they are something you can get out of the medicine cabinet or from a friend,” Gassman said. “They pose a huge public health threat to our youth because they perceive that, because they’re obtained from a pharmacy and prescribed by a doctor, they’re safe. They don’t recognize they are only meant for the person to whom they are prescribed and there can be serious drug interaction problems when used outside of a physician’s care.”

Among other findings in the latest Indiana drug use survey were either decreases, or the absence of increases in dangerous behaviors including binge drinking and methamphetamine use and a lower incidence of illegal drug use among Indiana youth, compared with national figures.

Males were more likely to use drugs than females in every age category. And peer and parental pressure do appear to affect a student’s decision-making when it comes to drug use, according to survey responses.

“It’s alcohol and cigarettes which we still need to pay the most attention to,” Gassman said. “I think as citizens we almost immediately look to the illicit drugs, to see how much danger they’re putting themselves in, but, actually, tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, smoking out of pipes and alcohol are much more leading public health problems than marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, narcotics and LSD combined.”