Determining Normal Deviance: Adolescent Drug Use?

This research examines change in lifetime drug use frequency among three drugs, marijuana, alcohol, and inhalants, and antisocial behaviors using a cohort longitudinal model. Inhalants are the only drugs which use decline with grade level. Focus of the article is whether the use of these three drugs is a normal part of adolescent development. Using three determinants: associations between drug use and grade and scores on an antisocial behavior scale; and percent of abstainers; the authors determined none of the three drugs represent normal deviance. Data are from 2008 thru the 2014 the Caring Communities Youth Survey (CCYS).