Surveillance of drug use among American Indian adolescents: patterns over 25 years.

Purpose: To examine the trends in drug use among American Indian adolescents attending schools on, or near, Indian reservations in the United States, to provide comparisons with non-Indian youth, and to discuss implications for prevention.

Methods: Reliable and valid school administered drug use surveys have been given every year for 25 years (1975-2000) to representative samples of Indian youth living on reservations, yielding a continuous record of trends in drug use. Comparisons are made with non-Indian youth with data from the Monitoring the Future project.

A survey of attitudes among drug user treatment providers toward the treatment of inhalant users.

This study assessed the attitudes of drug user treatment program directors towards the problem of inhalant "abuse." In 2000, surveys were mailed to directors asking about treatment success and prognosis for inhalant users, level of neurological damage incurred by users, availability of treatment resources, their program's policies toward admission of users, and staff training needs for inhalant use. Two open-ended questions queried their assessment of barriers to treatment and subjective feelings about the topic of inhalant use.

Inhalant abuse among American Indian, Mexican American, and non-Latino white adolescents.

The abuse of volatile solvents, or inhalants, is an enduring problem among adolescents although a number of factors obscure the nature and extent of this drug using behavior. The data presented here indicate that a number of social and perceptual correlates of inhalant use operate similarly across Mexican American, American Indian and non-Latino white adolescents. Peer factors appear to dominate, although they are somewhat less important for Mexican American and Indian youth.