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Indiana youth drug use continues to decline

By Ruth Gassman,   8/28/2007
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Results from the 17th Annual Survey of Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use by Indiana Children and Adolescents, conducted by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University Bloomington, suggest that drug use among Indiana adolescents is continuing to decline.

Pipe and cigar use, however, has increased. The survey, which analyzed data involving 158,632 students in grades six through 12 in both public and private Indiana schools, also found a slight increase in marijuana use and gambling among seventh graders.

“Students are finding alternative ways to use tobacco, such as hookahs and water pipes. Prevention advocates need to broaden their prevention efforts to include these latest tobacco smoking devices,” said IPRC Director Ruth Gassman. “For most drugs, however, adolescent use in Indiana has been on a slow decline over the last eight or nine years. Many communities have made decreasing adolescent drug use a priority and this data shows that their efforts are making a difference.”

The full report will be available online on Monday (August 21st) at http://www.drugs.indiana.edu. The following are major points from the survey results:

• Cigar and pipe use increase


While cigarette and smokeless tobacco use in all grades showed a decline or held steady. Cigar and pipe use increased for grades 7 – 12 compared to last year. These increases may be a result of adding hookah and water pipe to the survey.

Certain changes to the survey were made in order to increase the survey usefulness, update content, or align them with prevailing data collection standards.

• Binge drinking increased for the second year in a row


Lifetime, annual, and past 30-day reported use of alcohol continued to decline for all grades. Binge drinking, however, increased for the second year. This year the questions regarding binge drinking were moved to a more prominent location on the survey, and this could have contributed to this change. Thus, what appears to be an increase between this year and last year may instead reflect the survey’s underestimation of binge drinking in the past.

• Most grades report a decrease in marijuana use


Annual use of marijuana decreased or did not change for all grades except for 7th grade which had a slight increase in lifetime and annual use rates.

“Increasing programs and prevention efforts for young adolescents, such as the Afternoons R.O.C.K. after school program, could help deter some of the increased use we see for the 7th grade age group,” Gassman said.

• Methamphetamine use continues to decline


Reported prevalence of methamphetamine use declined or held steady for all grade levels for the third year in a row.

• Use of “Adderall” and “Ritalin”


In 2007, for the first time the word “Adderall” was added to the survey. In previous years, only the word “Ritalin” was included. It is possible that this changed contributed to our seeing a higher reported use of “Ritalin or Adderall” this year.

• Injection drug use remains the same


Injection drug use remained the same, with last year’s numbers having been the highest use ever reported.

• School activities and performance


The more frequently students participate in after – school activities, the lower is the prevalence of reported gateway drug use. These findings support the value of programs such as Afternoons R.O.C.K. in Indiana. According to Ruth Gassman, Executive Director of the IPRC, “research has demonstrated that adult supervised after school activities protect adolescents from