It is a cliche that use of drugs, especially of marijuana and the hallucinogens, was commonplace in the 1960s, far more so than in the conservative 1980s. Unfortunately, in the 1960s, no surveys were conducted even remotely like the high-school (Johnston et al., 1987) and the general population (NIDA, 1986) surveys we have looked at.
Fortunately, the nationally-representative household survey conducted in 1979 (Fishburne, Abelson and Cisin, 1980) "reconstructed" trends backward, relying on "retrospective estimates"— that is, based on the respondent's age and the age at which he or she began using the drugs asked about .
This survey clearly shows that the use of marijuana, cocaine, and the hallucinogens—the three most widely used illicit drugs—was extremely low in 1960. Only 6 percent of young adults age 18 to 25 had used marijuana even once. This figure rose gradually between 1960 and 1967, when it stood at roughly 15 percent..
Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, it rose much more sharply, and stood at 48 percent in 1972, the first year of the household survey . The same pattern holds for the other age groups, although at a significantly lower level, and for the other drugs, also at a significantly lower level. Thus, for the 1960s, the trend line for most illicit drugs rose throughout the decade—at first gradually, then more dramatically..
For the 1970s, the two surveys do not agree on every detail; for one thing, NIDA's surveys began in 1972, and the Institute for Social Research's highschool survey did not begin until 1975. For each drug, the story is a bit different. And for each indicator of use—lifetime, annual, and thirty-day prevalence—the trend lines are a bit different as well.
Still, the overall pattern is roughly this: Illicit drug use rose throughout the 1970s and peaked late in the decade—for many drugs, in 1979. In fact, according to the high-school survey, annual prevalence increased after 1975 and reached its highest level for a majority of the illicit drugs asked about—marijuana, inhalants (amyl and butyl nitrites), hallucinogens (including LSD), PCP, barbiturates, and tranquilizers—in 1979.
For the nationally representative household survey, the pattern is not quite so clear-cut, but it does hold for marijuana; for many of the other drugs, the peak year was 1977, 1979, or 1982. And for most illegal recreational drugs, there was a decline in use throughout the 1980s..
This, then, is the trend line for the prevalence and incidence of most illegal drug use: a gradual rise between 1960 and 1967, a fairly sharp rise between 1967 and 1972, a moderate rise between 1972 and 1979, and a moderate-to-substantial decline after 1979. There are exceptions to this pattern, but it covers many of the illegal drugs most of us are interested in—especially marijuana.
The one major exception to the overall pattern, as we'll see, is cocaine..
For marijuana use, the three measures of use for high-school seniors (Table 4.7) between 1979 and 1986 are all strikingly lower in the latter year than in the former—for lifetime prevalence, a decline from 60 to 51 percent; for annual prevalence, from 51 to 39 percent; and for thirty-day prevalence, from 37 to 23 percent .
The NIDA household survey shows a decline in annual prevalence between 1979 and 1985 in all age groups except for older adults—among vouth, a drop from 24 to 20 percent; among young adults, from 47 to 37 percent; and among older adults, an almost imperceptable rise from from 9.0 to 9.5 percent..
The use of hallucinogens, likewise, unquestionably fell during this period—for all three indicators for the ISR high-school survey, and in two out of three age groups for the NIDA household survey. (Unfortunately, the ISR survey categorizes PCP as a hallucinogen, which it most decidedly is not; I have used this study's "unadjusted" figures, which do not include the use of PCP.) In the high-school study, the use of LSD is also down..
Sedative use, including the use of barbiturates and methaqualone, declined by nearly half between 1979 and 1986 in the national survey. (However, it was slightly higher in two out of three age groups.)
The indicators for stimulants were down for the ISR study, but up for the NIDA survey. However, the high-school study was sensitive to the fact that many respondents who claimed to have taken a stimulant actually took a fraudulent nonstimulant "lookalike." This study, therefore, corrected for this tendency for respondents to overreport stimulants.
Unfortunately, all of the ISR's stimulant figures are unadjusted between 1975 and 1983, and all of them are adjusted for 1984, 1985, and 1986. Thus comparability during our time period is questionable..
The use of PCP, not asked about in NIDA's study, declined sharply during 1979-1985 in the ISR survey.
The number of respondents taking heroin was too small in either survey to draw any firm conclusions that we can place much faith in. Still, among the high-school students, heroin use did seem to decline a bit during the period in question.
For cocaine, the trend for the high-school survey was very slightly up; for the household survey, it was also up in two out of three age groups. This was especially true of the older adults, age 26 and over. The changes in the number and proportion of Americans using cocaine from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s were modest but significant, according to these surveys.
What was striking was not so much that new individuals used cocaine but that, among cocaine users, frequency of use increased..
In a follow-up study of high-school seniors one to ten years after graduation, use of nearly all drugs showed a slight post-high-school increase. The one exception was cocaine, for which the increase was massive. Lifetime prevalence for the 28-year-old cohort (those who had graduated in 1976) had quadrupled since their senior year—from 10 to 40 percent. (Lifetime prevalence for the senior class of 1986 was 17 percent.) Annual prevalence increased from 6 to 20 percent, and thirty-day prevalence from 2 to 8 percent .
Clearly, cocaine is a drug that is used considerably more by individuals in their twenties than in their teens. And just as clearly, when today's high-school students are in their mid- to late twenties, their use of cocaine will probably be significantly higher than it is now..
Alcohol consumption for the high-school population was down slightly; I: r the national population, it was remarkably stable. Only two comparisons can be made for cigarette use for the time period, and both reveal a drop in use. To summarize, the drugs whose use declined between 1979 and 1985 • ere marijuana; the hallucinogens, including LSD; sedatives, including barbiturates and methaqualone; inhalants; cigarettes; and PCP.
The drugs whose use remained more or less stable during this period were opiates other than heroin. The drugs whose use clearly increased during this period were cocaine and analgesics. And the drugs for which the data appear somewhat mixed are stimulants, tranquilizers, heroin, and alcohol..
Home : Trends in drug use since 1960
Trends in drugs use since 1960 .-::33303::-.
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