In February 2006, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) released a report titled
"Girls and Drugs" that purported to show "alarming trends in girls' use of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and
prescription drugs." This brief report received a great deal of publicity in the news media, with headlines
claiming "More girls than boys turning to drugs" (ABC News, Feb. 9, 2006) and "Girls using drugs, alcohol
more than boys" (MSNBC, Feb. 9, 2006) http://behs364.socprobs.net/MSNBC_2-9-2006.pdf. This dramatic
report is still available on the website of the ONDCP. However, where do things really stand over a dozen years
later? Are these "alarming trends" still apparent in more recent evidence on alcohol and drug use among young
women and men? .
Your assignment in Paper 1 is to present a critical, evidence-based examination of claims about gender and
alcohol use in the 2006 "Girls and Drugs" report. That is, I want you to use empirical evidence from more
recent national surveys to evaluate ONDCP's claims about "alarming trends" in alcohol use among young
women in the U.S. You can earn as many as 15 points by providing a clear, complete, well-documented, and
well-written response to this assignment in 1,000 words or more (approximately two single-spaced pages), not
counting references. You should focus primarily on patterns of alcohol use, although you can also refer to data
on other drugs if it is relevant to your main argument.
First, read the ONDCP report on "Girls and Drugs" carefully. Click the following link to read and/or download
this ten-page report (in pdf format): Girls and Drugs.pdf http://behs364.socprobs.net/ONDCPGirls_and_Drugs.pdf
Second, you might find it helpful to take a look at the press release that the White House ONDCP distributed to
the news media when the "Girls and Drugs" report was released on Feb. 9, 2006. Journalists often use press
releases to write their news stories rather than reading the full reports that accompany them: White House
Press Release 2/9/2006 http://behs364.socprobs.net/ONDCP-Press_2-9-2006.pdf
The next link will take you to an interesting commentary about the ONDCP report that appeared on the
Huffington Post website a few days after the report was released. This article by Maia Szalavitz makes a
number of critical observations about the selective and misleading use of statistical data by ONDCP. Read it
carefully, because it will give you some good ideas for your own critical analysis of ONDCP's claims about girls
and alcohol use: Maia Szalavitz, "Media Botches Drug Trends"
http://behs364.socprobs.net/Szalavitz_Huffpost.pdf
I want you to base your critical evaluation of the ONDCP report on recent epidemiological data collected by the
National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) and/or the Monitoring the Future study (MTF). The
following links will take you to websites where you can find relevant data from NSDUH and MTF on trends and
gender differences in drinking and drug use:
2013 NSDUH Data:
https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUHresultsPDFWHTML2013/Web/NSDUHresults2013.pdf
1975-2019 MTF Trends: http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/occpapers/mtf-occ94.pdf
Your task is to use statistical evidence from one or both of these surveys to evaluate claims in the ONDCP
report and the news media about a "growing problem" of alcohol use among teenage women. Are girls really
using alcohol more than boys? What does the evidence from recent surveys actually show about "alarming
trends" in alcohol use among girls? Be sure to base your answers to these or other questions raised by the
2006 "Girls and Drugs" report on solid evidence from one or both of these national surveys rather than on
speculation.
Sample Solution