New National Inhalant Data: Monitoring The Future 2010 results

Yesterday, the Monitoring the Future Report was released and it includes some interesting facts about inhalant abuse. Overall highlights here in this post- more specific details will follow in the next post.

Page 54 notes historical trends in inhalant abuse and changes in risk perception in use:

• Among 12th graders there was a long-term gradual increase in the use of inhalants (unadjusted for nitrite inhalants) from 1976 to 1987, followed by a leveling for a few years and then a further increase in the early 1990s.




• This troublesome increase in inhalant abuse also occurred among students in the lower grades, and was followed by a reversal in all 3 grades after 1995.




• After reaching a low point in 2002 or 2003 in grades 8, 10, and 12, use of inhalants increased some in all grades, but then declined in all grades more recently.
  



• Perceived risk for inhalant use among 8th and 10th graders had been declining fairly steadily after 2001, quite possibly as a result of generational forgetting of the dangers of these drugs; this decline halted in 2009 and 2010.




• A new anti-inhalant campaign might well be effective in offsetting this decline in perceived risk in recent years, much as a similar campaign appeared to do in the mid1990s.

Page 61: In 8th grade, inhalants rank second only to marijuana among the illicitly used drugs in terms of annual and lifetime prevalence.

Page 73: One 8th grader in seven (15%) reported using inhalants, and 1 in 28 (3.6%) reported inhalant use in just the month prior to the 2010 survey. This is the only class of drugs for which use is substantially higher in 8th grade than in 10th or 12th grade.

Page: 74: The very large number of 8th graders who have already begun using the so-called “gateway drugs” (tobacco, alcohol, inhalants, and marijuana) suggests that a substantial number are also at risk of proceeding further to such drugs as LSD, cocaine, amphetamines, and heroin.