Drug Survey the National Survey

Drug Survey

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is a yearly survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the Department of Health and Human Services. The NSDUH aims to determine the incidence of drug, alcohol, tobacco, and substance abuse, prevention, and treatment each year. For this analysis, the 2007 NSDUH report is used, reported last year, in September 2008. The NSDUH provides interesting information for end-users like researchers, health practitioners, and policy makers, mainly because of the rich information it contains, detailing the yearly trend for different types of illegal abuses, and providing a profile of users and abusers for each type of illegal abuse. The report stated that among the illicit drugs, marijuana was the most common type of illicit drug abused by individuals aged 12 years old or older in 2007. Meanwhile, past month nonmedical use of psychotherapeutic drugs (12 years or older) was lower in 2007 compared to 2006. Pain relievers are the most common type of drugs abused by this demographic. Third interesting fact reported in the reported is that looking into this demographic, it was found out that past month illicit drug abuse occurred most commonly among individuals aged 18- to 20-year-old. Among the underaged (not of legal age) group (12-17 years old), marijuana abuse among females lowered this year, while this figure has increased by 0.7% among males. Within the 12-year-old or older demographic, American Indians or Alaskan Natives have the highest reported illicit drug abuse in the past month, at 13%. Although there were distinct differences in the profile of drug users in terms of age group, gender, race, and even on the type of drug abuse, there were no distinct differences in the geographical locations of users, scattered among the following counties: large metropolitan, small metropolitan, non-metropolitan urbanized, and non-metropolitan less urbanized areas.