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Lloyd Johnston: Past 37 years we have surveyed American secondary school students; this year
we surveyed 47,400 high schools around the country, and we've been tracking their use
of great many substances, both licit and illicit, and the ones that seem to show the most important
results this year are the three most widely used; cigarettes and alcohol and marijuana.
With alcohol and cigarettes, we've seen a continuation of longer term declines in 2011,
and indeed, for both behaviors we are seeing the lowest levels of alcohol consumption and
smoking that we've seen in the life of the study.
Been drinking, for example, among high school seniors is down, almost by half, from what
it was 30 years ago, so that's very good news.
The other finding we have has to do with marijuana, and that's less good news, because we are
seeing a gradual increase over the last four years, and the proportion of young people
using marijuana that continued in 2011, and we are also seeing the number who are using
on a daily or near daily basis, increasing.
About 1 in 15 seniors indicate that they are currently, daily or near daily, users of marijuana.