Who’s doing drugs?

This article was published on 12.20.07

Every year, the Monitoring the Future Study looks at public and private schools around the nation to gauge drug trends among youth. Though illicit drug use has dropped over the past decade, popularity of some substances such as MDMA, or ecstasy, and prescription drugs has gone up. Here is the data, in percentages, from the 2007 survey, with the first numbers representing lifetime use and the second representing use in the past month.

	8th grade	10th grade	12th grade
Any illicit drug	19/7.4	35.6/16.9	46.8/21.9
Drugs other than pot	11.1/3.6	18.2/6.9	25.5/9.5
Marijuana	14.2/5.7	31/14.2	41.8/18.8
Hallucinogens	3.1/1	6.4/1.7	8.4/1.7
Ecstasy	2.3/.6	5.2/1.2	6.5/1.6
Cocaine	3.1/.9	5.3/1.3	7.8/2
Methamphetamine	1.8/0.6	2.8/0.4	3/0.6
Alcohol	38.9/15.9	61.7/33.4	72.2/44.4
Cigarettes	22.1/7.1	34.6/14	46.2/21.6