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Yes, you are naive. Drug use is still rising, not declining. The drugs are changing, but not declining. My youngest is a junior in college and I have friends who teach in the schools and have kids who are still in high school. Even the local Christian school that my son attended is getting worse because they are accepting kids who were kicked out of the public school to raise funds for expansion.

Again, Eva, this is anecdotal evidence -- that is, your subjective experience -- rather than empirical evidence. Still, you may be right about your particular area of the country. But you must remember that the survey described above is a description of adolescents across the entire country. The survey is merely saying that, on the whole (in general, on average), drug use among teenagers is declining. Almost certainly, there are areas of the country that have increased in drug use, and perhaps yours is one of them (it probably is). At the same time, more areas of the country have decreased drug use than have increased drug use. For example, perhaps your neighborhood is increasing, but another neighborhood in another part of the country decreased more than yours increased. On the whole, accounting for teenagers all across the country, there is less drug use among teens now than there was in the past. That's what the survey says. It is not a survey of your town.

Basic statistics. Average or mean = Sum of X/N. Translated to this research study: Sum of all teenagers' drug use divided by the total number of teenagers. Some teenagers in some parts of the country are using more, yes, but most teenagers, on average, are using less. Capice?