Hello everyone, and welcome back. In this
section we begin a discussion the epidemiology of substance abuse. You will
notice right off the bat that there are not a lot of slides in this section.
The reason is that the statistics continue to change very rapidly. However,
I wanted to provide you with a few things that will give you a little bit of
an overview. But understand that these will change over time.
So, let's go to slide two. First of all, as you can see here, there are a
lot of different estimates out there on all sorts of different variables. As
we can see in slide two, we spend approximately 102 billion dollars a year
on alcohol. We spend 59.9 billion dollars on taxed tobacco-related products.
We spend another 5.7 billion dollars on Xanthene-related products such as
coffee, tea, colas. We also spend approximately 430 billion dollars on
prescription medications. And, we also spend another 16 billion dollars on
over-the-counter medications. As you can see, we use and spend a lot of
money on different types of drugs and compounds. Let's throw some other
statistics out there as well since I like statistics.
As we can see on slide three, a classic example of survey methodology
that we use is we go out and we look at youth. Basically, what we have youth
do is take a risk behavior survey or what is called "YRBS." As we can see,
there are some general statistics here. A quarter of these students, usually
2-400,000 students, have reported using alcohol before the age of thirteen.
Eighteen percent had also smoked an entire cigarette and 10% had tried
marijuana. Also, as we commonly know out there in substance abuse treatment
land, males were more likely than females to try all of the substances.
What about some life-type statistics? Well, as we can see in slide four,
58.4% of all of these students had tried cigarettes, and had at least one or
two puffs. Fifteen percent had smoked one or more cigarettes during the day
within the previous thirty days and, 3.1% had also smoked more and 10.6
percent had also used smokeless tobacco.
Well, so what about alcohol use? As we can see here, 75% of these
students had consumed one or more drinks on more than one day during their
lifetime. That is, they drank two days consecutively. Forty-five percent had
one or more drinks in the previous thirty days, and 28% had more than five
drinks in a row, which is typically called binge drinking, in a couple of
hours during the previous thirty days. That means that these people for the
most part were drunk.
In addition, these students had done a lot of other types of things. As
we can see here on slide six, 40% had used marijuana, 22% had used marijuana
once or more during the previous thirty days, 8% had used cocaine, 4% had
used cocaine once or more during the past thirty days, and of course
inhalants, glue, etc, 12% had used them, and 3.9% had used them in the last
thirty days.
Well, what about steroids? As we can see in all these other statistics on
slide seven, 6.1% had used them, 3% had used heroin, 7.6% had used
methamphetamine, and 11% had used ecstasy.
Again, as we look, in general, on slide eight, of all statistics, not
just youth, males have higher than female rates for most drugs. But, white
females have the highest rate for cigarette smokers All you have to do is
look in your major magazines and see who smokes? It's not males anymore,
it's females. Hispanic males also have the greatest lifetime alcohol use.
And why do Hispanic females have the highest rates for current and episodic
alcohol use? Black male’s have the highest current rate for marijuana use.
White male’s are highest for inhalants and steroid use.
One may ask, "what about Idaho?" Well, what I have done here in slide
nine is provide you with a major website where you can use to go and look at
Idaho statistics. And, here you have all sorts of types of statistics that
relate to substance abuse in the state of Idaho. It is at a site called the
SASI (Substance Abuse Social Indicator) site. I encourage you to go look at
this site because what it does is it gives you all sorts of information by
county, by region, by whatever that is relevant to Idaho. You can also go to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for
Substance Abuse, NOMH and all sorts of other places as well. But for Idaho,
this is the place to go.
Well, as I told you, this section was going to be very brief. What I want
you to get out of this section is that statistics change, and that we have a
problem out there with our youth in relation to substance abuse. We are
making lots of progress, but we have a long, long, way to go.
So that concludes this section. In our next section we're going to talk a
little but about an overview of substance abuse, what it is, and all the
different fads, factors, and some other things that we use in discussing the
issue. Until then, we hope you have yourself a good day and we look forward
to talking to you again soon.
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