The data are from the 2002 through 2005 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. NSDUH is an annual survey conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) through a contract with RTI International. NSDUH is the largest national epidemiologic survey in the United States containing information on DSM-IV AUD symptoms and diagnostic criteria in both adults and adolescents. In addition, NSDUH oversamples youths and young adults, so that the sample is approximately equally distributed among three major age groups: 12 to 17 years, 18 to 25 years, and 26 years or older. To increase reliability of the estimates in the present study, we combined data from four years of the surveys: 2002 to 2005. Although NSDUH selects a multistage area probability sample each year for each of the 50 states and District of Columbia, the sampling design for 2005 is slightly different from that for 2002–2004. First, the 2005 NSDUH is the first survey in a coordinated five-year sampling design that spans 2005 to 2009, so unlike prior year surveys that have a 50-percent overlap in
