 The Monitoring the Future survey is given annually to students in eighth, 10th, and 12th grades who self-report their substance use behaviors over various time periods, such as past 30 days, past 12 months and their lifetime. The survey also documents students’ perception of harm, disapproval of use and perceived availability of drugs. The survey results are released the same year the data are collected. From February through June 2021, the Monitoring the Future investigators collected 32,260 surveys from students enrolled across 319 public and private schools in the United States.
The percentage of adolescents reporting substance use decreased significantly in 2021, according to the latest results from the survey. The 2021 survey reported significant decreases in use across many substances, including those most commonly used in adolescence – alcohol, marijuana and vaped nicotine. The 2021 decrease in vaping for both marijuana and tobacco follows sharp increases in use between 2017 and 2019. This year, the study surveyed students about their mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study found that students across all age-groups reported moderate increases in feelings of boredom, anxiety, depression, loneliness, worry, difficulty sleeping and other negative mental health indicators since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We have never seen such dramatic decreases in drug use among teens in just a one-year period. These data are unprecedented and highlight one unexpected potential consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused seismic shifts in the day-to-day lives of adolescents,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Volkow also highlighted the importance of identifying the factors that contributed to this dramatic decrease in substance use.
 According to the Indiana Maternal Mortality Review Committee’s 2020 Annual Report, the leading cause of death for Hoosier women in the year following childbirth is substance use disorder. Almost 30 women died from substance use in 2019 in Indiana. The year before, 32 women died from substance abuse during pregnancy or in the year following childbirth. Over those two years, that accounts for almost half of the women who died from childbirth. Substance use is one of the most common causes of death in Indiana, for all Hoosiers. That prevalence is one reason why the state committee tasked with studying maternal mortality believes focusing on substance use is a key to combating Indiana's maternal death crisis.
The committee's first report, released in 2020, was the first time Indiana had published vetted, analyzed data on why women were dying from and following childbirth in the state. Its second report was released last month. The report separates deaths into two categories: pregnancy-related and pregnancy-associated, but not related. Pregnancy-related deaths include those caused by a direct, medical result of childbirth or pregnancy. Pregnancy-associated, but not related, deaths, however, include deaths during pregnancy or within one year following childbirth from any cause. Indiana’s pregnancy-associated maternal mortality ratio was 74.2 deaths per 100,000 births in 2019. In 2018, it was 77. However, not every state tracks pregnancy-associated deaths, making it difficult to understand how Indiana compares across the country.
However, one limitation of the report is that it only includes two years’ worth of data, so it may be some years before trends can be defined.
 Please visit the Indiana Drug Overdose Dashboard, where you will find data from 2017 up to provisional data for 2021. In this dashboard, you will find data regarding opioid prescriptions, hospital discharges, and drug-related deaths.
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