Smart Motorist

"Monitoring the Future," a yearly survey of approximately 14,000 high school seniors conducted by the University of Michigan and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, has tracked alcohol and other drug use by seniors since 1975. Since 1982, all categories of alcohol use have declined according to the self-report of students. These categories include lifetime use, yearly use, monthly use and "binge drinking" (5 or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks). However, self-reported use in all of these categories has increased since 1993.

Self-reported monthly alcohol use increased for high school seniors from 48.6 percent in 1993 to 52.0 percent in 1998. Binge drinking increased from 27.5 percent to 31.5 percent.

By comparison, the percentage of fatalities that were alcohol-related for 17 and 18 year-olds decreased from 37.7 percent in 1993 to 34.8 percent in 1998. However, during this time the number of alcohol-related fatalities for these ages increased by 3.5 percent (from 838 to 867).

Other trends reported by this survey include:

• In 1998, 54.1 percent of high school seniors had used an illicit drug at least once in their lifetime. Past year use of an illicit drug by seniors increased from 31.0 percent in 1993 to 41.4 percent in 1998, but down from 42.4 percent in 1997.
• The proportion of eighth-graders taking any illicit drug in the past year has declined since 1996 (23.6 percent to 21 percent). From 1997 to 1998, this proportion for tenth-graders has dropped from 38.5 percent to 35 percent and from 42.4 percent to 41.4 percent for twelfth-graders.
• Over one in twenty (5.6 percent) of today’s high school seniors is a daily marijuana user.
• In 1998, the use of marijuana at all prevalence levels has decreased slightly for 8th-, 10th-and 12th-graders.
• In 1998, fewer high school seniors disapproved of, or thought it was harmful, having five or more drinks once or twice each weekend.

Read further for State by State Youth Alcohol-Related Fatality Rates

 

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