January 23-29: National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week

“While there are many questions around alcohol and drug use and addiction, it’s not always easy to find factual answers. Information from the internet, social media, TV, movies, and music isn’t accurate.

For young people, friends can also be a source of misinformation. From January 23-29, National Drug & Alcohol Facts Week provides the facts about drugs, alcohol, and addiction. This week-long health observance is an opportunity to hear directly from scientists and other experts through educational events, Drugs & Alcohol Chat Day, and partnerships. While the week primarily targets high school students across America, the resources and information from these events can be used by any organization as a part of their prevention strategy.” – https://teens.drugabuse.gov/

Statistics:

  • Drug use is most common among young adults who are 18 to 25 years old. Rates of current (past month) use of illicit drugs in 2015 were higher for young adults aged 18 to 25 (22.3 percent) than for youths aged 12 to 17 (8.8 percent) and adults aged 26 or older (8.2 percent)
  • Although drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years drink 11% of all alcohol consumed in the United States. More than 90% of this alcohol is consumed in the form of binge drinks.
  • About 570,000 people die annually in the U.S. due to drug use. That breaks down to more than 480,000 deaths related to tobacco, about 31,000 due to alcohol, nearly 22,000 due to overdose from illicit (illegal) drugs, and close to 23,000 due to overdose from prescription pain relievers.
  • In 2015, the Monitoring the Future Survey reported that 10% of 8th graders and 35% of 12th graders drank during the past 30 days, and 5% of 8th graders and 17% of 12th graders binge drank during the past 2 weeks.
  • According to NIDA’s Monitoring the Future survey–a national survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders–past-year use of illicit drugs other than marijuana was down from recent peaks in all three grades in 2016. Also notable is the decrease in tobacco use, which is now at the lowest rate in the survey’s history for all three grades.

Statistics were taken from https://teens.drugabuse.gov/ and www.cdc.gov/.

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