Demographic Subgroup Trends among Young Adults in the Use of Various Licit and Illicit Drugs, 1988-2017. Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper Series. Paper 91

This occasional paper presents subgroup findings from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study on levels of, and trends in, the use of a number of substances for nationally representative samples of high school graduates ages 19-30. The data have been gathered in a series of follow-up surveys of representative subsamples of high school seniors who were first surveyed in 12th grade as part of the MTF study. Therefore, the universe being described omits people who did not complete high school--between 8 and 15% of each age group, with the most recent class cohorts closer to the bottom of that range. Surveys of the graduating cohorts of high school seniors started in 1976 and have continued with each graduating class since. Data were first available for the 19-22 age group in 1980 and for the older age groups in subsequent years, as the tables and figures in this occasional paper indicate. Three demographic dimensions are differentiated: gender, region of the country, and population density. Gender includes trends for males and females; region describes trends for each of the four major regions defined by the U.S. Census; and population density differentiates trends for five levels of community size.