The Co-occurrence of Current Illicit Drug Use and Heavy Alcohol Use

The distributions of current illicit drug use and heavy alcohol use by demographic characteristics in Table 2.1 and Table 2.2 show some common characteristics among full-time workers who reported current illicit drug use and who reported current heavy alcohol use. For example, both groups appear consist mainly of white male workers. It is possible that the same workers tended to report use of both substances. To explore this, Figure 2.1 presents, for 1994 and 1997, the percentage and estimated number for three groups: those who reported current illicit drug use only, those who reported heavy alcohol use only, and those who reported both illicit drug and heavy alcohol use in the past month. The numbers for 1997 are not statistically different from those for 1994. Of the total population of illicit drug and/or heavy alcohol users in 1997, 43 percent used only an illicit drug, 42 percent used only alcohol heavily, and 16 percent used both illicit drugs and alcohol heavily. Therefore, although both current illicit drug users and heavy alcohol users were more likely to be male and white, the majority of users engaged in only illicit drug use or only heavy alcohol use.