Drug use up for boomers, down for teens

AP via Yahoo ^ | 9/7/2006 | KEVIN FREKING

[Incorrigible]

Drug use up for boomers, down for teens

By KEVIN FREKING,
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Some moms and dads might want to take a lesson from their kids: Just say no. The government reported Thursday that 4.4 percent of baby boomers ages 50 to 59 indicated that they had used illicit drugs in the past month. It marks the third consecutive yearly increase recorded for that age group by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Meanwhile, illicit drug use among young teens went down for the third consecutive year — from 11.6 percent in 2002 to 9.9 percent in 2005.

"Rarely have we seen a story like this where this is such an obvious contrast as one generation goes off stage right, and entering stage left is a generation that learned a lesson somehow and they're doing something very different," said David Murray, special assistant to the director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The annual survey on drug use and health involves interviews of about 67,500 people. It provides an important snapshot of how many Americans drink, smoke and use drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Overall, drug use remained relatively unchanged among Americans age 12 and older in 2005. About 19.7 million Americans reported they had used an illicit drug in the past month, which represented a rise from 7.9 percent to 8.1 percent. The increase was not only due to the boomers, but an increase was also seen among those 18-25, the age category that always ranks highest when it comes to illicit drug use.

Among the 18-25 group, drug use rose from 19.4 percent to 20.1 percent. Federal officials commenting on the report emphasized the drop in use among younger teens without citing the increase in the next older age group.

"The news today is there is a fundamental shift in drug use among young people in America," Assistant Surgeon General Eric B. Broderick said in a statement.

Murray called the 18-25 group the gauntlet through which everybody runs. He said the peak of drug use among youth in the United States occurred in the late 1970s.

"And they brought it with them like baggage when they hit 50 and 60," Murray said.

Drug use by baby boomers increased from 2.7 percent in 2002 to 4.4 percent last year. Marijuana was by far their drug of choice, Murray said.

That's true overall. There were 14.6 million people who reported using marijuana in the past month, about 2.4 million cocaine users and 6.4 million people who used prescription drugs for nonmedical purposes, such as pain relievers, tranquilizers or sedatives. In 60 percent of those cases, the drugs came from a relative or friend for free. Only 4.3 percent reported buying the drug from a drug dealer or other stranger.

While drug use went up slightly in '05, so did alcohol use. Slightly more than half of Americans age 12 and older reported being current drinkers of alcohol. That translates to 126 million people, up from 121 million people the year before.

Officials noted that alcohol use among those 12-17 did decline from 17.6 percent to 16.5 percent.

The percentage of Americans who acknowledged driving drunk at least once in the past year also dropped slightly in 2005 — from 13.5 percent to 13 percent.

Meanwhile, tobacco use held steady at about 29.4 percent, even though among youths 12-17, tobacco use did drop from 14.4 percent to 13.1 percent.

____

On the Net:

Office of National Drug Control Policy: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/

Not for commercial use.  For educational and discussion purposes only.

[ohioWfan]

Please answer three questions yellow....

Who, among us boomers, decided against prayer in schools........in the early sixites when we weren't even old enough to drive yet?

How many boomers were on the Supreme Court that legalized abortion in 1973......that is under the age of 25? I know that I was on the streets protesting the decision, but no one in my generation was responsible for it..........so please give me some names of those who were.

And how exactly is my generation responsible for divorce? Have you read the Scripture? It's been around for quite a bit longer than our generation has.

I'd appreciate your thoughtful reply to those three questions.

Thanks.

[Howlin]

Sorry I had to drop out of the conversation, but I was on the phone with my niece

PLANNING HER WEDDING IN ST. JOHNS

*Snort*

[Howlin]

Just wanted to make sure that I announce where I'm going because evidently that's what I'm known for doing.

Myself, I'm on the way to the COUNTRY CLUB for dinner. :-)

[TKDietz]

All this Boomer bashing ticks me off and I'm not even a Boomer. Hamilton doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just one of those people who has to blame some class of people for all the world's problems and he's picked those people born between 1946 and 1964. Maybe he'll figure things out when he grows up.

[tacticalogic]

I'm guessing he's still young enough for his parents to be the stupidest people who ever lived. They'll probably get a lot smarter in the next few years.

[ohioWfan]

Hamilton clearly knows nothing about the history that occurred before he was born.

It's typical of young'ns these days. I guess we can't blame him for being a part of the life began in 1980 "ME" generation, eh? ;)

[ohioWfan]

btw, you don't have to be a boomer to realize that one generation cannot be responsible for all the world's ills.

I suppose it's part of the victim mentality of today's youth too. Nothing could possibly be THEIR fault. It has to be Mommy's....

[Ol' Sox]

The Silent Generation......1925 - 1945

Weathermen (Weather Underground was a film...duh) -
David Gilbert - b. 1944

Woodstock -
Max Yasgur - b. 1919
Bob Dylan - b. 1941
Jimi Hendrix - b. 1942
68 DNC Convention (Yippies, Chicago 7) -
Abby Hoffman - b. 1936
Jerry Rubin - b. 1938
David Dellinger - b. 1915
Rennie Davis - b. 1939
Tom Hayden - b. 1939

Berkley (San Fran in General?)
Grace Slick - b. 1939
Ken Kesey - b. 1935
Jerry Garcia - b. 1942
Berkley Free Speech Movement - 1963-1964
Berkley Radicalism in general - 1957 - Today

Just making a point here, Hamilton. Much of what went on during the 60's was due to the Silent Generation, not the Boomers, who were young sheep, led astray...

[mugs99]

In fact, high numbers of people underreport perfectly legal activities like drinking and smoking cigarettes

Lol... Yeah, I think the surveys are more of a waste of taxpayer money than a threat to privacy.
.

[TKDietz]

And Timothy Leary, the "tune in, turn on, and drop out" guy was born in 1920. He and his cadre were all born before the Baby Boom. He and a fellow tripper named Richard Alpert, also known as Ram Dass, were fired from Harvard in 1963 for turning students on to LSD and other hallucinogens. These students, by the way, were probably all born before the Baby Boom because in 1963 the oldest Baby Boomers would have been only 17 years old. The youngest hadn't even been born yet. People like Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, and other pre-Boomers really kicked off drug popularity in this country. The whole thing really started on college campuses in the early 1960's before Baby Boomers were even old enough to be in college. The Baby Boomers came in just in time to ride the wave started by people older than them. They are no more or less at fault for the drug problem in this country than the generations that came after them. HamiltonJay is a Gen X'r like me, and all I can say is that at least in my neck of the woods there is no shortage of people my age and younger who took drugs when they were in their teens and early twenties and beyond in some cases.

Whether you are talking about drug use or the prevailing thought of the day in the sixties "counterculture," these are not things started by Baby Boomers. The civil rights movement with all the protests really took off in the fifties. The questioning of government and society's institutions prevalent in the turmoil of the late sixties and early seventies began when the older Baby Boomers were just babies themselves. The main instigators in all this were people born prior to 1946. Boomers were just kids happy to join the fraccus, and actually only a very small percentage of them were part of any craziness. There just happened to be a lot of people born during the Baby Boom. Like any other generation, a lot of the young people were eager to join the party and the party that was going on then happened to involve drugs in many cases. Certainly not all or even most Baby Boomers were druggies and even fewer were particularly politically involved. And a paltry small percentage had any major role in leadership of the big organized protests and that sort of thing from the late sixties and early seventies. In 1970 the oldest Baby Boomer would have been 24, and most weren't even in their twenties yet. Those running the show were older than the Baby Boomers.

It is not fair to blame the Baby Boomers for all the problems in this country. The fact is that the blame rests with Americans from every generation. Gen X'rs aren't any better than Baby Boomers, and those who came before the Baby Boomers weren't all so great either. People aren't good or bad just because they were born during a certain year or during a certain period of years. All this Baby Boomer bashing is just counterproductive silliness and those who engage in it are morons who are doing more harm than good pitting one generation against another for no good reason.

[Howlin]

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943)

Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937)

Madeleine Korbel Albright (born Marie Jana Korbelová on May 15, 1937)

[mugs99]

All this Baby Boomer bashing is just counterproductive silliness and those who engage in it are morons who are doing more harm than good pitting one generation against another for no good reason

Right on TK!
.

[Protagoras]

You are ignorant and arrogant. A fatal combination.

[ansel12]

"Don't forget to lock up when you leave; you never know what's going on in that trailor park."


I asked you earlier what you meant when you thought you were insulting someone by attacking the perceived cost of their home, what do you mean by that attempt at class attacks.

[Peach]

Maybe you haven't noticed the class attacks by another freeper, so we're attacking back. You have a problem with that?

[ansel12]

" we're attacking back. You have a problem with that?"



Well , yes I do have a problem with personal attacks on FR but I originally asked you about post 100.

Post 100:
"She's a class warrier; probably lives in a trailor is my guess. Successful people don't typically condemn an entire generation of people."

[Peach]

And my original answer stands.

[momfirst]

My mother the boomer:

1. Did drugs

2. Married multiple times

3. still has mental problems

I am so thankful that she was a mess otherwise I might have turned out to be a liberal.

Hello? Are you my long lost twin???? How else could we have had the same mother? Oh wait, my mother still does drugs...my mistake...

[TKDietz]

"Drug use up for boomers, down for teens"

The title of this piece is even dishonest. The author is talking about one age group, those 50 to 59. He says drug use increased for this age group for three years in a row through 2005. The problem is that these NSDUH surveys are conducted in June of each year and at no time in the three years before and including the June 2005 survey were all the people in the 50 to 59 age group Baby Boomers. There would have still been some people born in 1945 who were 59 in June of 2005, and there would have been a lot more born before 1946 in June of 2004 even more in 2003. The only way you it would be fair to say that more Boomers are using drugs would be to look at those born from 1946 to 1964 over a period of years and see if the percentage of that group reporting drug use is growing. Unfortunately the NSDUH doesn't break the numbers down for us in a way make exact calculation in that regard, but just glancing at the numbers it is appears that drug use has not increased for Baby Boomers.

The older people get, the less likely they are to do drugs, even if they did use drugs at some point in their lives. This hasn't changed. When you look the numbers for those in their forties, it appears that the number who use drugs is stabilizing or even dropping. What's happening is that drug users who were in their forties are getting older and populating the 50 to 59 age group, and a small percentage of them still use drugs. In 2004 only 38.2% of those 55 to 59 reported that they had ever even tried an illicit drug. That number jumped to 44.1% in 2004. It was much lower in years prior to 2004. Is the increase we are seeing in the number who report past use in their lifetimes occurring because more and more people in their fifties are trying drugs? Of course not. If you look at those in their forties you will see that better than 60% of them have tried drugs and close to that percentage of those between 50 and 54 have as well. What's happening is that those who grew up when drug use took off in the sixties and seventies and peaked in 1979 are getting older. Very few of them still use drugs, but those few who still do are getting older too and moving on up in the age brackets.

We'll see increases in the 50 to 59 group for a few more years to come until the number of those in that age group who have ever tried drugs hits around 60%, what it is for those who were born after them. The biggest increases over the next several years though will be in the 60 to 64 age group and the 65 and up age category. Drug use actually doubled for the 65 and older group from 2004 and 2005, from .4% to .8%. And again, that's not because more and more senior citizens are getting into drugs, it's because those older folks who came of age before drugs were ever popular are dying off and those who were still relatively young in the sixties and seventies are getting older. If you were 65 in June of 2005 you would have been 25 in 1965 and only 30 by 1970, young enough to have been partying with the crowd getting into drugs. On the 2004 NSDUH only 8.3% of those 65 and older reported ever having even tried an illicit drug. In 2005 10.9% admitted on the survey to having tried one or more illicit drugs during their lifetimes. That percentage has been increasing and it will continue to increase, as will the small percentage of people 65 and older still using illicit drugs.

Look at the tables though. Only about 6% of those 60 through 64 who admitted ever using drugs said they used drugs in the month preceding the survey, compared to about 40% of 18 year olds who admitted drug use at some point in their lives. For the most part when you look at these tables throughout the years, the older people get, the less likely they are to use drugs. People tend to grow out of their wild drug taking phases as they get older. The same happened with Baby Boomers. Drug use may very well be up for the author of the article that is the subject of this thread, but it is not up for Baby Boomers.

You can see this for yourselves if you'll just look at these tables: http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k5NSDUH/AppG.htm#TabG-10

[yellowdoghunter]

Going the trailer park route is like the "Your momma's so fat" route. At least that is what we were taught in 8th grade debate class. Once you have to go after how someone looks, where they were born, where they live, etc....you have lost the debate.

The Rizzo gang first goes for the "You are a troll, then "you are insane, need meds", then, "you are uneducated", then on to the trailer park and your momma is so fat jokes.

I let the trailer park jabs go because they are just so stupid but I have gotten several FRmails about them (some with some pretty witty comebacks, but I decided not to use them)and decided to say something.