Monitoring the Future

Monitoring the Future (MTF), started in 1975, is a large-scale, long-term study of American youths, college students, and adults through age 45. The study grew out of an increasing concern regarding the health risks of both legal and illegal substance use during adolescence. Illegal drugs emerged from specific youth subcultures to the general adolescent population in the 1960s and have remained a national concern ever since. In order to adequately understand and respond to adolescent substance use, it became obvious that reliable and valid data were needed. For more than 30 years now, the MTF has gathered data that assesses the prevalence and trends of adolescent substance use and has impacted many policy and intervention efforts to curb adolescent substance use.

Since the study's inception, significant ...