There also is too little attention paid to how drinking may be both a cause and an effect of some adverse health and behavioral outcomes (such as psychiatric disorders and intimate partner violence). Finally, research findings often are presented as if they applied inhibitor Tubacin similarly to all women drinkers, without discussing how other conditions and contexts (such as a drin
In the United States, alcohol use typically begins and escalates during adolescence and young adulthood. To describe the historical and developmental trends in substance use in this age group, the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study (Johnston et al. 2012) was designed in 1975. Since then, this ongoing national-cohort sequential longitudinal study assessing the epidemiology and etiology of substance use among adolescents and adults has been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

This article summarizes findings from the MTF study regarding the prevalence and predictors of alcohol use during adolescence. The Prevalence of Drinking and Historical Changes As is true for adults, alcohol is the most commonly abused substance among American youth. The MTF study has been documenting the prevalence and trends in alcohol use frequency and binge drinking (i.e., consumption of five or more drinks in a row) for the past several decades in annual, national samples of American 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students. Using these data, Patrick and Schulenberg (2010) found that very few 8th- and 10th-grade students who reported having ever used alcohol had not used alcohol in the past year, suggesting that most of the alcohol use reported is relatively recent.

Therefore, this article focuses on alcohol use in the past 12 months and the past 30 days, as well as self-reported drunkenness in the past 30 days and binge drinking in the past 2 weeks. The prevalence figures for these variables for 2011 are summarized in table 1, broken down by grade level, gender, and racial/ethnic subgroups (for more information, see Johnston et al. 2012). Table 1 Prevalence of Alcohol Use (%) by Demographic Subgroups in 8th, 10th, and 12th Graders, 2011 In 2011, 27 percent of 8th graders, 50 percent of 10th graders, and 64 percent of 12th graders reported having used alcohol in the past 12 months. The corresponding rates for alcohol use in the past 30 days were 13 percent, 27 percent, and 40 percent, respectively. Furthermore, 4 percent of 8th graders, 14 percent of 10th graders, and 25 percent of 12th graders reported having been drunk within the past month. Finally, binge drinking in the past 2 weeks was reported by 6 percent of 8th graders, 15 percent of 10th graders, and 22 percent of 12th Anacetrapib graders.