Alcohol use and cigarette smoking among teenagers are at historic lows, but the number of high school students abusing prescription drugs like Oxycontin is rising, and sedative abuse is at its highest in 26 years, according to an annual national study released yesterday.

Asked whether they had used tranquilizers, barbiturates or sedatives for nonmedical use in the last year, 14 percent of high school seniors, 11 percent of 10th graders, and 7 percent of 8th graders said yes, according to the Monitoring the Future study, which the federal government considers the best benchmark of teenage drug use.

Among high school seniors, 7.2 percent had used sedatives without a prescription in the last year, up from a low of 2.8 percent in 1992, and a level not reached since 1979, when 7.5 percent of seniors reported using them. And 5.5 percent of seniors reported using Oxycontin, a potent pain killer, up from 4 percent in 2002, when the survey first asked about the use of the drug.

"If you told me heroin use was at 5 percent, most people would be very concerned," said Lloyd Johnston, the principal investigator of the study and a professor at the University of Michigan, which conducts the survey for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "I'm not sure it's a whole lot less dangerous that Oxycontin use is at that level. This is a drug that has great potential for overdose and for creating dependence."

By contrast, less than 1 percent of high school seniors reported using heroin.

Officials noted that the prescription drugs were much more widely available than illegal drugs.

But they also spoke of a cultural shift; teenagers have grown up in a world where it is routine to reach for a prescription bottle to enhance performance, to focus better in school or to stay awake or calm down.

"They become part of our everyday lives," said Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "You see an ad for medication the way you see an ad for shampoo, and the message is that it's just like an everyday thing."

Other federal studies, Dr. Volkow said, estimate that six million America adults abuse prescription drugs. "When it comes to adolescents," she said, "we're used to worrying about illegal drugs, but we have to also be worried about the legal ones."

The study, conducted since 1975, surveys a nationally representative sample of about 50,000 students in 400 public and private schools.

Officials said the overall picture was good; the number of students who reported using steroids or smoking marijuana, which the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy considers the gateway to other drug abuse, has gone down or held constant. Over all, the office said, 700,000 fewer students were using illicit drugs in 2005 than in 2001.

"These are remarkable declines," said John P. Walters, the director of drug control policy. "Almost every single illegal drug is down, and some dramatically."

Use of marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug, peaked in 1996 and has continued to decline, though the decline held flat for eighth graders this year. Asked whether they had smoked marijuana in the previous year, 12.2 percent of 8th graders, 26.6 percent of 10th graders, and 33.6 of 12th graders said yes. Asked whether they had used other illicit drugs, 8.1 percent of 8th graders, 12.9 percent of 10th graders, and 19.7 percent of seniors said yes. Less than 2 percent in any group had used steroids.

Asked whether they had used alcohol in the previous year, 68.6 percent of high school seniors said yes, compared with 70.6 percent in 2004 and 84.8 percent in 1975. Cigarette smoking has declined, too; 23.2 percent of seniors had smoked in the last 30 days, compared with 25 percent in 2004 and 36.7 percent in 1975.

The drugs that showed increases were sedatives - that includes sleeping pills like Ambien - Oxycontin and inhalants.

At the lowest point, in 1992, 2.8 percent of seniors said they had used sedatives. That rate had risen for a decade before leveling off in 2003, and has begun to rise again, to 7.2 percent. Oxycontin use among all three grades combined has risen 26 percent since 2002, from 2.7 percent to 3.4 percent of all 8th, 10th and 12th graders. Many students, researchers said, believe the drugs to be safe because they are legal.

"There is some logic to that, because if you're buying Ecstasy, you have no idea where it was made or what's in it," Mr. Johnston said.

But with more drugs coming from Internet sources, he said, "I suspect lots of these drugs are not legitimately produced. So it's a false assurance."

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1981/a01.html
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Pubdate: Tue, 20 Dec 2005
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2005 The New York Times Company
Contact: letters@nytimes.com
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Kate Zernike
Cited: Monitoring the Future study
http://monitoringthefuture.org/data/05data.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)