Addiction Treatment, Alcohol Addiction, Drug Addiction

What is National Substance Use and Misuse Prevention Month?

Posted on by Angus Whyte
hands come together to represent community in drug use prevention
17
Oct

Summary: National Substance Use and Misuse Prevention Month, supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) occurs every year during the month of October to increase public knowledge about addiction prevention.

Key Points:

  • The goal of this month is to raise awareness about the proactive prevention of substance use and misuse among young adults and adults in the U.S.
  • Efforts focus on education about the prevalence and risks of substance use and misuse and how to reduce those rates through individual, community, and institutional efforts.
  • The month began as a focus on youth but expanded scope in 2021 to include prevention effors focused on people of all ages.

Why Do We Need National Substance Use and Misuse Prevention Month?

In 2011, then-President Barack Obama declared October as National Substance Abuse Prevention Month. The goal of the declaration, and the month itself, was the following:

“Encourage parents, youth, schools, businesses, and community leaders across the country join in a month-long observance of the role that substance abuse prevention plays in promoting safe and healthy communities.”

The month began as an overall substance abuse awareness month with a focus on youth. Over the following ten years, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) sponsored the month and organized a wide range of activities to bring awareness to the important of substance abuse prevention. Then, in 2021, President Joe Biden changed the name and focus of the month, to align with two trends in substance abuse prevention:

  1. The escalated need for prevention in light of the ongoing opioid and overdose crisis.
  2. The change in the way we talk about addiction and substance abuse.

The first reason was because we were in the middle of the worst drug overdose crisis in the history of our country and needed to pull together to focus on long-term prevention. The second reason was to officially recognize the person-first movement in treatment and awareness, and the recognition that stigmatizing language creates barriers to treatment for many people.

That’s why, in 2021 the new administration changed the name of the month to National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, and the White House delivered this new proclamation:

“We must continue to encourage parents, caregivers, educators, and other members of the community to play an active role in promoting evidence-based prevention efforts that encourage healthy lifestyles, promote alternatives to substance use, and educate young people about the harms associated with substance use. We know that delaying substance use until after adolescence, when the brain has fully developed, decreases the likelihood of an individual developing a substance use disorder.”

That states the case in simple terms.

Now let’s take a look at the latest data on substance use in the U.S. for young adults, mid-life adults, and older adults. After we offer the statistics, we’ll present the action steps the ONDCP recommends we all take in order to do our part for National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month.

Substance Use Among Adults: Facts and Figures

We accessed these statistics by consulting the  2026 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2026 NSDUH) and the 2026 Monitoring the Future Survey. These two annual surveys include data from close to one hundred thousand people in the U.S. The consistency of these two surveys allows us to identify both short term changes and long-term trends in substance use in the U.S., and the large sample size enables us to make population-level generalizations from the data.

If that last phrase is new to you, what it means it a sufficient amount of people participate in the survey that we can consider it representative of the substance use trends for the entire country, not only for the people surveyed.

Let’s take a look at that data, first among young adults.

Drug Use Among Young Adults 19-30: 2026 Monitoring the Future Survey

Past 12-month use:

  • Alcohol: 80%
  • Cannabis: 41.9%
  • Other: 17.8%

Past 30-day use:

  • Alcohol:61.6%
  • Cannabis: 28.8%
  • Other: n/a

Next, the data for mid-life adults.

Drug Use Among Mid-Life Adults 35-50: 2026 Monitoring the Future Survey

Past 12-month use:

  • Alcohol: 82.2%
  • Cannabis: 29.9%
  • Other: 15%

Past 30-day use:

  • Alcohol: 64.1%
  • Cannabis: 20.2%
  • Other: n/a

Now, the data for late mid-life adults.

Drug Use Among Late Midlife Adults 55-65: 2026 Monitoring the Future Survey

Past 12-month use:

  • Alcohol: 80.3%
  • Cannabis: 21.3%
  • Other: 11.4%

Past 30-day use:

  • Alcohol: 63.9%
  • Cannabis: 15.0%
  • Other: n/a

The prevalence rates show that we need to direct our resources and communicate the facts about the risks of drug use to people of all ages, from young adults to later mid-life adults – not just kids and adolescents.

Now let’s consider another metric. The stats above are for drug use itself. It will help us to look at the rates at which substance use among our adults and changes to the disordered use of substances, a.k.a. substance use disorder (SUD).

Annual (Past Year) Substance Use Disorder (SUD): Age Groups

Cannabis Use Disorder:

  • Adults Age 35: 6.7%
  • Adults 40-50: 18-25: 15%
  • Adults 55-65: 3.2%

Alcohol Use Disorder:

  • Adults Age 35: 16.6%
  • Adults 40-50: 18-25: 18.6%
  • Adults 55-65: 13.4%

Other Substance Use Disorder:

  • Adults Age 35: 2.4%
  • Adults 40-50: 1.1%
  • Adults 55-65: 0.9%

Those numbers are larger than most people realize. For perspective, let’s take a look at the overall SUD rates published in the 2026 NSDUH.

Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in U.S.: Totals

  • Total 12+: 9.8% (28.2 million)
  • Age 12-17: 6.6% (1.7 million)
  • Age 18-25: 17.8% (6.2 million)
  • Age 26+: 8.9% (20.3 million)

That’s the final data we need to explain why we need substance use and misuse awareness and prevention months. Use and misuse can lead to disordered use, which is associated with functional impairment across all areas of life, mental health disorders, chronic physical illness, and premature mortality.

What We Can All Do to Help

First, we need to pay special attention to specific demographic groups:

  • Young and emerging adults.
  • People with mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression.
  • People prescribed opioids for pain
  • Anyone who experiences job loss, income insecurity, food insecurity, or housing insecurity
  • Anyone with adverse experiences during childhood
  • Survivors of recent trauma, including natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods

Next, we can get involved at home, in schools, in the workplace, and in the community. The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) published a list of steps each of us can take to spread awareness in prevent substance use among youth and adults.

Here’s what they recommend:

How to Get Involved in National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month

For Youth

  • If you work at a school, or with youth, or have school age kids, you can:
    • Organize awareness workshops
    • Start a contest about prevention and awareness:
      • Video
      • Essay
      • Art
    • If you have kids, you can:
      • Talk to them about substance use:
        • Risks: physical, emotional, psychological
        • Consequences: physical, emotional, psychological, legal, academic

In the Workplace

  • If you’re in a position of authority:
    • Create employee seminars on the risks of excess alcohol and drug use
    • Include warnings about fentanyl
    • Create stress management seminars and opportunities, including:
      • Exercise
      • Meditation
      • Mindfulness-type activities, such as yoga or tai chi
    • If you’re not in a position of authority:
      • Have conversations with peers to educate, reduce stigma, and set yourself up as a safe, compassionate peer in case a coworker needs someone to talk to but has no one.
        • You can be their safe person

In the Community

  • At neighborhood meetings, homeowner’s association meetings, or any community event:
    • Speak and raise awareness about drug use
    • Include warnings about fentanyl

You may not want to be that person railing against problems that don’t exist. However, right now in the United States, the opioid and overdose crisis is very real and very dangerous. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Stopping just one person from trying opioids or any of the dangerous synthetics that may contain fentanyl can save a life: that’s more than a pound of cure for the effort it takes to speak and raise awareness.

Up to this point, we’ve focused on the collective: how we, as a nation, a culture, and a greater community, can help increase awareness about the danger of substance use. We’ll close this article by narrowing the focus to the individual, and offering a five step process that may help a person who needs help decide to get the help they need.

How to Create Change in Your Life: Substance Use

It’s not always easy to make big life changes.

And when the changes are related to the disordered use of substances, they may seem impossible, overwhelming, or out of reach. First, we want to remind anyone reading this that one thing: you are not alone. Next, want to remind you this: change is possible – and you can do it.

We located this resource on the National Community Action Agency (NCAA) website. The NCAA – not the college sports league – is a nationwide group of community action centers created in 1964 to help families in communities around the country access life-improving services with specialized programming targeted to specific community needs.

The NCAA created these five steps for anyone worried about their substance use, and think it may be time to take proactive steps to create sustainable change.

A Simplified 5 Step Process for Creating Change

  1. Remind yourself why you want to change your:
  • Drug use
  • Alcohol use
  • Relationship to drug and/or alcohol use
  1. Write down the pros and cons of changing your alcohol or drug use patterns
    • Have you tried to stop before?
    • What helped?
    • What hurt?
  2. Set specific, measurable goals:
  • Start date for changing our use or relationship to use
  • Define the changes you seek:
    • No use
    • Total cessation of use
  1. Research and contact evidence-based substance use treatment programs in your area:
    • Substance use treatment centers
    • Mental health treatment centers
    • Support groups: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or Narcotics Anonymous (NA)
  2. Seek professional or community support:
    • Residential, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, or outpatient programs
    • Peer meetings like AA or NA
    • Tell your friends and family you’re committed to change, committed to recovery, and ask them to support you in any way they can.

We close this article with this information because we know change starts with each of us. We can help our friends and family with substance use issues, but we need to know how to help ourselves, too. If you need professional support for a substance or alcohol use problem, please remember this:

The sooner you get the treatment you need, the better the outcome.
Angus Whyte

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