NCJ Number
191071
Date Published
August 2001
Length
252 pages
Annotation
This report presents data on drug use by college students and adults ages 19-40, 1975-2000.
Abstract
This document reported the results through 2000 of all surveys conducted as part of the Monitoring the Future study of American secondary school students, college students, and adults through age 40. Data in this report concerned college students and adults ages 19-40. The study sought to characterize levels and trends in certain behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and conditions in the population and to increase understanding of why the changes were occurring. The study had a complex cohort sequential design appropriate for distinguishing and explaining period-related, age-related, and cohort-related change. The report described the research design, including sampling plans and field procedures used in both in-school surveys of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students and follow-up surveys of young adults. It also discussed methodological issues such as response rates, population coverage, and validity of the measures. Over more than a decade--from the late 1970's to the early 1990's--there were very appreciable declines in use of several illicit drugs among 12th-grade students, and even larger declines in their use among American college students and young adults. These findings have extremely important policy implications: (1) substance-using behaviors among American young people are malleable, they can be changed; and (2) demand-side factors appear to have been pivotal in bringing about these changes. Notes, tables, figures