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Recovery Month 2005 Kick-Off

The Recovery Month 2005 celebration began with a major press event on September 8, 2005, at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Auditorium at 200 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, D.C. The press event highlighted the release of SAMHSA's 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, which surveyed 67,760 Americans to determine the latest statistics on substance use. Speakers at the press conference included:

• John Walters, Director, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
• Charles G. Curie, Administrator, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
• Dr. H. Westley Clark, Director, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment
• Diedre Drohan Forbes, Chair, Friends and Voices of Recovery, Westchester County, NY, and a person in recovery from co-occurring substance use and depression
• Carrick Forbes, a student at Hunter College, NY, in recovery from heroin abuse
• Vicki Sickels, a person in recovery from methamphetamine abuse from Des Moines, Iowa

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health provides a comprehensive and accurate snapshot of substance use trends for the past year. The annual survey, formerly called the "Household Survey," is the largest of its kind, and provides annual estimates of the prevalence of illicit drug, pharmaceutical, alcohol, and tobacco use in the United States, while monitoring trends over time. Some of the more encouraging highlights of the 2004 survey discussed at the press conference included:

• There was a 9-percent decline in illicit drug use among American youth between the ages of 12 and 17 from 2002 to 2004.
• Marijuana use declined by 7 percent among young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 from 2002 to 2004. However, marijuana continues to be the most commonly used illicit drug.
• Among the 93.4 million people who had ever smoked cigarettes daily in their lifetimes, nearly half (46.2 percent) had stopped smoking in 2004.

Despite this progress, the press conference emphasized that there is more work to be done. The following statistics show that drug and alcohol use is still a very serious public health problem in the United States.

• The illicit drug category with the largest number of new users, 2.4 million people, was nonmedical use of pain relievers.
• 121 million Americans aged 12 or older were current drinkers of alcohol, while 55 million participated in binge drinking (defined as 5 or more drinks on at least 1 occasion) at least once in the past 30 days.