Drug use and life style among college undergraduates: a 30-year longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE

The authors examined trends in the prevalence of substance use and its relationship to attributes of life style among college students over a 30-year period.

METHOD: They distributed anonymous questionnaires to 796 seniors at a large New England college in 1999, using methods essentially identical to those of their previous studies at the same college in 1969, 1978, and 1989.

RESULTS

Most forms of drug use rose to a peak in 1978 then fell over the next 21 years, except for use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("ecstasy"). On several variables, college substance users differed more sharply from nonusers in 1999 than in previous decades.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the study was limited to students at a single institution, its findings suggest that college drug use is generally declining and that users have increasingly diverged from nonusers in their values and life style.