Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2016. Volume I, Secondary School Students

Monitoring the Future (MTF) is designed to give sustained attention to substance use among the nation's youth and adults. It is an investigator-initiated study that originated with and is conducted by a team of research professors at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. Since its onset in 1975, MTF has been continuously funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse--one of the National Institutes of Health--under a series of peer-reviewed, competitive research grants. MTF contains ongoing national surveys of both adolescents and adults in the United States. It provides the nation with a vital window into the important but often hidden problem behaviors of illegal drug use, alcohol abuse, tobacco use, anabolic steroid abuse, and psychotherapeutic drug abuse. MTF has helped provide a clearer view of the changing topography of these problems among adolescents and adults, a better understanding of the dynamics of factors that drive some of these problems, and a better understanding of some of their consequences. It has also given policymakers, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the field some practical approaches for intervening. This annual monograph series has been a primary vehicle for disseminating MTF's epidemiological findings. This monograph presents the results of the 42nd survey of drug use and related attitudes and beliefs among American high school seniors and 26th such survey of 8th and 10th grade students. Two of the major topics included in the present volume are (1) the "prevalence and frequency" of use of a great many substances, both licit and illicit, among American secondary school students in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades and (2) "historical trends" in use by students in those grades. Distinctions are made among important demographic subgroups in these populations based on gender, college plans, region of the country, population density, parent education, and race/ethnicity. MTF has demonstrated that key attitudes and beliefs about drug use are important determinants of usage trends, in particular the amount of risk to the user perceived to be associated with the various drugs and disapproval of using them; thus, those measures also are tracked over time, as are students' perceptions of certain relevant aspects of the social environment--in particular, perceived availability, peer norms, use by friends, and exposure to use by others of the various drugs. Data on grade of first use, discontinuation of use, trends in use in lower grades, and intensity of use are also reported. This report focuses attention on drug use at the higher frequency levels rather than simply report proportions that have ever used various drugs. This is done to help differentiate levels of seriousness, or extent, of drug involvement. Appendices are included. [For "Monitoring the Future National Survey Results on Drug Use, 1975-2016. Volume II, College Students & Adults Ages 19-55," see ED578605.]