Changing Drug Trends in the United States
If you’ve spent any time around a college campus this trend might surprise you, but according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the United States is seeing significant improvements in the occurrence of drug abuse. NIDA has conducted research and studies among high schoolers and found that, with the exception of marijuana, illicit drug use is falling. Rates of use are measured as either current, within the past year, or at some point in your life. Use of methamphetamines, cocaine, hallucinogens have all decreased in the last five years. After extremely high rates of drug abuse in the 70s and early 90s, a push for drug abuse education hit America’s public schools. Videos, special speakers, and presentations warning of the risks associated with drug abuse were ever-present within the nation’s schools. Though it may have seemed overbearing or excessive, these messages may have had some effect and could be partly responsible for the improvements to this problem.One type of drug abuse that seems to be resisting improvement is the abuse and overuse of prescription drugs. This could be the case because since these drugs are legal under certain circumstances and prescribed for specific conditions, they can be more easily obtained. A teenager could much more easily steal a few pills from a parent’s medicine cabinet than acquire cocaine on the street, and with less risk. Though this trend appears to be leveling off, for a period of time, there was a large concern with the abuse of over the counter medicines. The ingredients in these medicines, when overused, can create similar reactions to illegal drugs such as speed. An even larger concern was the use of pseudoephedrine found in these drugs to make methamphetamines. In order to fight this growing problem, the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 limited how much of any medicine containing pseudoephedrine a person could purchase, which could have played a role in the leveling off of this form of drug abuse.