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Illicit Drug Use Among Lifetime NonDrinkers and Lifetime Alcohol Users

 

The NSDUH Report: Illicit Drug Use Among Lifetime NonDrinkers and Lifetime Alcohol Users

 

 Highlights:

  • Data from SAMHSA's 2002 and 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health were pooled to examine the patterns of illicit drug use among adults aged 21 or older who have used alcohol in their lifetime compared with the patterns of illicit drug use among adults who have never used alcohol in their lifetime.
  • An estimated 88.2% of persons aged 21 or older (175.6 million) had used alcohol in their lifetime and 11.8% (23.5 million) had not used alcohol in their lifetime. Among those who had used alcohol, 52.7% had used one or more illicit drugs at some time in their life while only 8% of the nondrinkers had used an illicit drug.
  • Nonmedical use of pain relievers was the illicit drug used most often by lifetime nondrinkers; whereas marijuana was the illicit drug used most frequently by adults who had ever used alcohol in their lifetime.
  • An estimated 88,000 adults aged 21 or older were dependent on or had abused illicit drugs in the past year but had never drunk alcohol.

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This Short Report,  The NSDUH Report: Illicit Drug Use Among Lifetime NonDrinkers and Lifetime Alcohol Users, is based on SAMHSA's  National Survey on Drug Use and Health conducted by the Office of Applied Studies (OAS) in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).  SAMHSA's National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is the primary source of information on the prevalence, patterns, and consequences of drug and alcohol use and abuse and for selected mental health measures in the general U.S. civilian non institutionalized population, age 12 and older.   SAMHSA's National Survey on Drug Use & Health also provides estimates for drug use and for selected mental health measures by State.

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This page was last updated on May 12, 2006.

SAMHSA, an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, is the Federal Government's lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment, and mental health services in the United States.

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