Figure 1.

Number of publications since 1968 on the topic “adolescence and drugs of abuse” (white bars) and “adolescence and drugs of abuse and stress” (black bars). Scopus.com search¹ suggest an 8-fold increase in articles published from 1997 to 2011 on adolescence and the most abused drugs. What has received relatively less attention is the effect of stress on adolescent drug abuse. In fact, adding “stress” to these search criteria reduced the search results by 7-fold (black bars).

Footnote: ¹Searches conducted at www.scopus.com (Elsevier B.V.) and data were downloaded on June 3rd, 2013. Search terms entered into the field for “Adolescent + Drugs of Abuse” were, “TITLE-ABS-KEY(((rat OR mouse OR monkey OR hamster OR animal) AND (juvenile OR adolescence) AND (cocaine OR heroin OR morphine OR amphetamine OR methamphetamine OR marijuana OR thc OR alcohol OR mdma OR nicotine)))”. Search terms for “Adolescence + Drugs of Abuse + Stress” were, “TITLE-ABS-KEY(((rat OR mouse OR monkey OR hamster OR animal) AND (juvenile OR adolescence) AND (cocaine OR heroin OR morphine OR amphetamine OR methamphetamine OR marijuana OR thc OR alcohol OR mdma OR nicotine) AND stress))”.