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. 2015;45(3-4):195-210.
doi: 10.1177/0047237915622084. Epub 2016 Feb 9.

What Are Youth Asking About Drugs? A Report of NIDA Drug Facts Chat Day

Cory M Morton  1 , Heidi Hoefinger  2 , Rebecca Linn-Walton  3 , Ross Aikins  4 , Gregory P Falkin  5
Affiliations

What Are Youth Asking About Drugs? A Report of NIDA Drug Facts Chat Day

Cory M Morton et al. J Drug Educ. 2015.

Abstract

The current study analyzes a sample of questions about drugs asked online by youth who participated in the National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) "Drug Facts Chat Day." The types of drugs youth asked about were coded into 17 substance categories, and the topics they raised were coded into seven thematic categories. The top five queried drugs were marijuana (16.4%), alcohol (8.5%), tobacco (6%), cocaine (5.7), and pharmaceutical drugs (4.5%). The effects of drug use, experience of being high, the addictiveness of drugs, pharmacology, and drug sales were among the more common types of questions to emerge but varied depending on the substance. These findings show the types of information young people are seeking about drugs and have clear implications to inform youth drug education programs.

Keywords: adolescent attitudes; drug abuse; information dissemination.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Top 5 drugs mentioned in Chat Day questions by year.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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