It's been four decades since the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but aging baby boomers haven't stopped turning on. The federal government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released earlier this month, finds that as boomers move into their 50s in large numbers, drug use among older adults in the United States has hit its highest point ever.
In the government's latest report, reflecting drug use in 2007, 1 in 20 Americans ages 50 to 59 told researchers they had taken illicit drugs in the past month.
More than half of these older users still like their street drugs, including marijuana and cocaine. But as they contend with the aches and pains of aging, boomer drug users are adding prescription drug use to their mix of vices, according to the report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
A new generation of drug users, by contrast, isn't waiting to reach middle-age to add prescription drugs to its portfolio of abuse, the report says. Among teens and young adults ages 12 to 25, one-third of those who use illicit drugs say they recently have abused prescription drugs - including painkillers, tranquilizers and stimulants. Among kids ages 12 to 17, 3.3 percent had abused prescription psychotherapeutic drugs in the past month. Among 17- to 25-year-olds, 6 percent had abused prescription drugs in the past month.
Those generational trends are driving a significant change on the landscape of U.S. drug abuse. After years of declining American use of street drugs - cocaine, hallucinogens and marijuana - prescription medications have begun moving front and center as the nation's drug of choice.
The result, according to the latest federal drug-use survey: Last year, Americans who began abusing prescription drugs outnumbered those who took up smoking marijuana - traditionally the nation's "gateway drug."
Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, says the report underscores a "paradigm shift" in drug abuse and in its likely treatment. Though addiction to prescription drugs is not new, the current generation of teens and young adults has grown up around unprecedented use of prescription drugs, Volkow says, and is inclined to view them as safe simply because they are prescribed by doctors.
"That comfort level," Volkow says, "facilitates the abuse" of these medications. Add to that the high from such drugs as narcotic pain relievers, she says, and young users are at high risk of becoming addicted.
