Greenville Family Partnership

Youth Inhalant Use

It is a problem in communities across the nation and Greenville County, South Carolina is no exception. Since its inception, Greenville Family Partnership (GFP) has advocated for the prevention of underage alcohol, tobacco and other drug use and abuse.

Since 1984, GFP has provided inhalant awareness education and prevention programs to schools, churches, businesses, and other organizations to inform and enlighten adolescents, parents, and other concerned individuals about the immediate and possibly deadly consequences of youth inhalant use, abuse, and addiction in our community.

What's New?

• Although inhalant use carries serious health risks, including brain damage and cardiac arrest, the perceived risk of inhalant use has declined among youth even as use remains constant.

• Inhalants trail only alcohol among the substances used by 12-year-olds to get high. More 12-year-olds say they have tried inhaling substances for their intoxicating effects than have tried marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens combined. 

• 2.4 million adolescents (9.7%) used an inhalant during their lifetime, and 1.0 million (4.1 percent) used an inhalant in the past year. On any given day in the past year, 44,000 adolescents use inhalants and place their lives and health at risk.

• Not only are inhalants easily accessible, cheap, and easy to hide, they are also addictive and deadly. Death can occur at any use, even the first use. Although inhalant use may exacerbate existing respiratory conditions, adolescents with such conditions are no less likely to use inhalants than those in the general population.

• 143,000 adolescents (0.6 percent) with at least one of four respiratory conditions (i.e. asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and sinusitis) abused inhalants in the past year.

• Rates of past year inhalant use were slightly higher among females than among males (4.3 vs. 3.9 percent) and among those aged 14 or 15 than among those aged 12 or 13 and 16 or 17 (4.7 vs. 4.1 and 3.5 percent, respectively). [Substance And Mental Health Services Admin.]

Youth Inhalant Use Reports:

• National Survey of Parent and Teen Attitudes on Substance Abuse 2009
• National Parent and Teen Attitudinal Tracking Survey 2009
• Teens and Technology: Online Exposure
• Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds
• Teens and Sexting: How and Why Minor Teens are Sending Sexually Suggestive, Nude or Nearly Nude Images via Text Messaging
• The National Survey on Drug Use and Health Report: Trends in Inhalant Use 2002-2007
• Partnership Attitude Tracking Study: Teen Inhalants Report 2005
• South Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey 2009: Middle and High School Students

Links:

• Alliance for Consumer Education
• Center for Substance Abuse Research
• Inhalant Abuse Nursing Implications, RnCeus 
• Inhalant NIDA web site
• Monitoring the Future
• National Inhalant Prevention Coalition
• National Institute on Drug Abuse
• New England Inhalant Abuse Prevention Coalition
• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration