Substance abuse in the Native American Youth is a very significant problem in their community today. From
apa.org, Native Americans have a variety of health and social issues, and there are higher rates of cigarette, marijuana, and drug usage in Native American than the rest of the nation. From the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, American Indian communities have been susceptible to substance abuse, which is related to their limited social and economic opportunities. Native American teens have shown disturbing alcohol and drug use patterns. They also show that they start these habits much earlier than normal for other Americans.
As seen in the data above of students in school, the amount of alcohol, binge drinking, marijuana, and cocaine use is very high for 8th grade students compared to the nationwide data for non-American Indian students. The Native American students start much earlier than the rest of the students, but then they seem to remain constant and even drops a little bit for 12th graders, and the non-Native Americans catch up with them. The reason the American Indian percentage drops for the 12th graders is because only 47% of those students remain in school, compared to 71% of non-native teens, so the majority of the students have dropped out and over half of that information isn't on the graph. Drug use is usually higher in students who have dropped out of school, so the drug use data for 12th graders is highly underestimated. Not on the graph, American Indian's heroin and Oxycontin use is two to three times higher than the national average. This substance abuse problem can contribute to violence, delinquency, and mortality from suicide or alcohol or some other substance. Since American Indian children are starting to abuse substances before they are even teenagers, cautionary programs have started to try to prevent this from happening by targeting kids at a very young age. From
http://www.dodgingbullets.org/drug-abuse-native-american-indian-youth/, I learned that these problems can be due to lack of health care and rehab, and these are all very underfunded for these specific people.
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