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Study: Teen drug use mostly declines

WASHINGTON - America's teens are smoking less and popping pain pills more.

The lure of the family medicine cabinet helped nearly one in 10 high school seniors try out prescription painkillers last year, even as their generation continued turning away, at least slightly, from smoking and many other drugs.

The decline in illicit drug use by teens was modest, but continued a trend, according to the government's annual study of drug use by eighth, 10th and 12th grade students. And while teen cigarette smoking fell to its lowest level since the survey began, eighth-graders showed their first increase since 1996 in smoking in the month before the survey.

The survey of 49,347 students in 402 public and private schools across the country found that 21.4 percent of eighth-graders had used some illicit drug in their life, down from 21.5 percent a year earlier. For 10th-graders it was 38.2 percent, down from 39.8 percent and for 12th-graders it was 50.4 percent, down from 51.1 percent.

Use of the painkiller OxyContin grew from 4 percent to 5.5 percent of high school seniors from 2002 to 2005, said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, at a briefing where the report was made public. Their use of Vicodin has been consistently over 9 percent, clocking in at 9.5 percent in 2005.

Only marijuana topped prescription drugs in teen use, she said, and that has been declining. For 2005, 44.8 percent of 12th-graders said they had used marijuana at some time in their lives, down 0.9 percentage points from 2004. The total was 34.1 percent for 10th-graders, down 1 point. The 16.5 percent among eighth-graders was up from 16.3 percent, ending a steady decline since 1996.

[Last modified December 20, 2005, 01:51:07]