oungsters between twelve and seventeen years of age used illicit drugs on a past-month basis.15 This rate has risen substantially compared to 8.2 percent in 1994, 5.7 percent in 1993, and 5.3 percent in 1992 -- the historic low in the trend since the 1979 high of 16.3 percent. The University of Michigan’s 1996 Monitoring the Future study found that more than half of all high school students use illicit drugs by the time they graduate. Cocaine Use Among Youth. Cocaine use is not prevalent among young people. In 1996, approximately 2 percent of twelfth graders were current cocaine users. While this figure was up from a low of 1.4 percent in 1992, it was still 70 percent lower than the 6.7 percent high in 1985. Among twelfth graders in 1996, 7.1 percent had ever tried cocaine -- up from the 1992 low of 6.1 percent but much lower than the 1985 high of 17.3 percent. However, during the past five years, lifetime use of cocaine has nearly doubled among eighth graders, reaching 4.5 percent in 1996.16 A similar trend is identified in the 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, which showed a drop in the mean age for first use of cocaine from 23.3 years in 1990 to nineteen in 1994.17 Heroin Use Among Youth. Heroin use is also not prevalent among young people. The 1996 Monitoring The Future study found that 1 percent of twelfth graders had used heroin in the past year, and half of 1 percent had done so within the last thirty days. Encouragingly, both figures were lower than the 1995 findings. However, the 1996 survey showed that the number of youths who ever used heroin doubled between 1991 and 1996 among eighth and twelfth graders, reaching 2.4 percent and 1.8 percent respectively.18 Marijuana Use Among Youth. Marijuana use continues to be a major problem among the nation’s young people. Almost one in four high school seniors used marijuana on a "past-month" basis in 1996 while less than 10 percent used any other illicit drug wi...
