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Real Teens Ask: Do Many Kids in High School Do Drugs?
16 Comments 
Questions about drugs? Lots of teens are asking. That’s why each year NIDA scientists spend a day chatting online with high school students and answering their questions.
At our last Drug Facts Chat Day, Livelaughlove94 asked:
“Do many kids in high school do drugs?”
The best way to find out if high school kids do drugs is to ask them. That’s exactly what NIDA does every year in its annual Monitoring the Future Study. This survey of more than 46,000 teens—8th, 10th, and 12th graders to be exact—showed that only about 3 percent, or 3 in 100 teens have used cocaine or Ecstasy in the last year, and only about 1 in 100 used methamphetamine. That’s not a lot. Teens also said they were smoking a lot less now than teens used to smoke in the ’90s—like 3x less if you’re a 10th grader. So, what is the most commonly used illegal drug?—Marijuana. About a quarter of 10th graders say they have tried it in the past year. You can see the numbers for each major drug type in this report
.
So, to answer your question, not that many kids in high school do drugs, although marijuana is the most common. So even though it may seem like “everyone’s doing it,” know that not everyone really is.
For more details on specific results from the Monitoring the Future Study, feel free to browse an overview of the results.
I am from Hong Kong. We also face this teens drug abuse problem in recent years. The percentage spread is in the region of 10%. The most common drug is K. In December 2009, the government will start piloting a “Voluntary Drug Abuse Test” to high school students in one of the districts. We appreciate similar experiences from other places of the world.
There is a big possibilities that kids in high school engage into drugs. Teenage is a stage where different kinds of peers are pushing kids to be with them as a part of their group. During grade school the same peers or friends but high school it is the other way around. Come to think that parents can’t watch over their kids 24/7. But with a good communication within the family it could be possible to be stopped or eliminate.
I agree with you. It is better that we ask the teens about their drug abuse directly to them. Even though the ratio of students you have mentioned to abuse drugs are less, i fear that it may easily spread among other teens also because at this age teens are prone to temptations and enthusiasm. So it is better we make sure that they don’t get addicted to drugs which may lead to negative consequences later.
Regards,
… Okay seriously… no offence, but when i took that test i lied. And so did like all my friends, you guys think that just cause you handed out a piece of paper and told us to write down if we did it we would be honest because it was annonomous??? Thats halarious. Just figured i would let you know your statistics are bogus. Not trying to be rude just stating a REAL fact.
haha when i read this:
“So, to answer your question, not that many kids in high school do drugs”
i laughed a lot!!!! i go to school at [deleted by blog editor] and although we are a small country school the drug problem is bad!!!!!! and the police officer and teachers that works at our school have no idea whatsoever what is going on right under their noses!! seriously, people at football games found this place behind a shed where no one goes and they were smoking and doing drugs and well… it was bad. but of course NO ONE can say ANYTHING about ANYTHING they see otherwise that person will get death threats and get their tires slashed in the parking lot and have to go to homecoming fearing for their life. like one time this girl said something and everyone in the school hated her and she was instantly unpopular. it was sad to watch but she wasnt really that close to me soo i didnt have to deal with it but im sure it sucked!!
so to really answer the question
YES their is a drug problem
and getting students to fess up or rat eachother out is soooo not gonna happen!!
in a perfect world…maybe but in the real world…not a chance!!
is there anyway that the comment i just submitted above would be reported to my school because all the school officials where acting odd and having meetings and then we had a fire drill where they searched the lockers with the police dogs soo…i am wondering if they found out or got a comment about it.
no way man
hey em, yeah that happens sometimes and our researchers are aware. what’s interesting is that all the major surveys show similar trends in drug abuse across time. i doubt there’s a coordinated effort to lie (with the same answers) on all those surveys…..meaning we believe the stats but thanks for the comment.
hey good student, fyi I just posted your initial comment so there’s no way they could have seen it. also just to clarify we’re here to start conversations and answer questions not collect information so no we didn’t report your comment to anyone.
I think that teen/high school drug use is more common than 25%. However, I do not think that “everyone” is doing it, and I think that doing an over-arching study about teen drug use across the country without displaying tables by location, socio-economic status, race, religion, etc. is not that helpful. The study says the surveys ask these questions and take these factors into account but that they cannot do them justice in the report because the results are so varied. It should have been evident through these varied results that an overarching study by age on teen-drug use means only so much. The amount and types of drugs used by students attending inner-city, public, lower-funded schools certainly varies from those used by wealthy, suburbian, private-school attending teens. The types of schools, the types of students attending these schools, and the environments the students go home to when school is over must all be considered in order to get a real sense of how often and why students use drugs.
To combat the teen drug problem, all of these factors have to be taken into account because they affect the access students have and the choices they make. Furthermore, to really combat the teen drug problem, it needs to be recognized that a lot of students begin using drugs before eighth grade and that all of the factors previously mentioned affect this choice as well. In short, to really discuss high school student drug usage, it needs to be examined through the various factors that affect these choices, not just through the analysis of age and drug type.
in my smallschool i know about maybe 15-20 kids that don’t do drugs, mainly marijuana. But the rest are always going out partying and smoking at more than half of our football games not more than 40 people show up because every one is out smoking pot.
so as far as i know drug abuse is a huge problem in school
Sadly you guys are looking at drug use in teens too late. I can say from first hand experience that I tried marijuana for the first time when I was 13 and it was a pretty common thing in my Jr. High. I didn’t even go to a lower class school, it was one of the best schools in the region and the students came from middle class families in suburbs. As it progressed through my jr high years kids started experimenting with ecstasy and other drugs. This was 10 years ago, I’m sure it’s gotten much wrse since then. I’m from Canada btw. I even wrote a 6 part mini series exploring drug use in younger teens on my blog, you can see part 1 at http://i-crimson.com/dark-side-of-growing-up-part-1/
I’m in the middle of writing a paper on the prevalence of drugs in junior high and high schools. I can tell you that the stats on drug usage by NIDA is laughable. Drug abuse does not know any boundaries, whether school region, socio-economic status, neighborhood, religion etc. Read the book called “Beyond the Yellow Brick Road” by Bob Meehan. He has run the most successful drug abuse programs in the country and he’ll tell you your stats are completely off. Actually he’d tell you you were freakin’ nuts to think there isn’t much of a problem. By the way, the school officials here in Arizona contend that there isn’t much of a problem either. Apparently they haven’t visited any of the bathrooms where you can see residual coke on the sinks, or buy E in class. Kids lie on these tests, why wouldn’t they? Get a grip parents and school administrators. There’s a lot more going on than you want to admit, because then you’d really have to figure out how to fix this. Unless we are willing to take a stand a figure out how to really tackle this problem it will become impossible to fix.
Karen, we certainly didn’t mean to imply there isn’t a “problem” with drug abuse in this country. In fact, we wouldn’t even exist if that were the case. The statistics we cite here our from our highly respected Monitoring the Future study, which shows continuing declines in tobacco use and in use of stimulants like methamphetamine. The point of the post was not to say there isn’t a problem, but rather to point out that our large epidemiological survey (46,000 teens is a large number for a survey of this kind) shows relatively low use of certain drugs, both licit and illicit, in 8th, 10th, and 12th graders–something we wanted to call attention to, in case teens think it’s the “norm” to do drugs. However, we are well aware that this survey only reflects trends, not the reality on the ground in particular places.
Interesting that “Bob Meehan” was brought up. Bob Meehan has officailly ‘retired’ after so many former attendees of his treatment programs complained about him. [deleted by editor per comment policy] I have met him personally, have known dozens of his former victims, and personally have known people who have worked for his groups. [deleted by editor, per comment policy] BEWARE [deleted by editor, per comment policy]. Just google Bob Meehan, read the transcripts for his 60 minutes interview.
@Karen, @RD–In response to both of these posts, NIDA acknowledges there are many drug abuse treatment programs out there and, sadly, many with dubious claims of success that end up wasting people’s money and, worse, effecting no change for those who are suffering and need help. We caution people in search of good programs to try and evaluate them according to science–based principles, not just on the claims of the people who run them. An evidence–based program is one that is backed up by legitimate evaluations of treatment outcomes. A good program has solid research–based principles at its core, a summary of which NIDA has published and disseminated to programs across the country. We have to do a better job in this country of connecting people to effective programs, a needed cultural change that NIDA is striving to bring about.