Teens are doing fewer drugs than ever (except for weed)

Teenagers are doing fewer drugs than ever before except for marijuana, according to results from a nationally representative survey that has been running for 42 years.

Numbers from this year’s Monitoring the Future survey show the lowest levels of use of heroin, meth, cocaine, ecstasy and inhalants ever recorded. The questionnaire — which is administered by the National Institute on Drug Abuse with the University of Michigan — surveys about 45,000 8th, 10th, and 12th graders from both public and private high schools. (The survey didn’t include 8th and 10th graders until 1991.)

The numbers might be falling because cigarettes and alcohol are harder to get

The falling levels of drug use are especially surprising given the current opioid epidemic. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a record 50,000 people died from overdoses last year. “We were concerned this trend in the general population would influence teenagers,” said NIDA director Nora Volkow. But there has been a 45 percent decrease in the use of prescription opioids in the past five years. “Both the prescription abuse epidemic and heroin patterns are not translating into teenagers,” says Volkow.

Fewer teens are using alcohol and cigarettes than ever before, too. The only exception to the downward trend was marijuana. While fewer 8th graders were using marijuana, the numbers remained stable for 10th graders and high school seniors, which Volkow says is probably because of the growing push toward marijuana legalization.

Lloyd Johnston, a University of Michigan social science researcher who was the principal investigator of the survey, says overall numbers might be falling because fewer teens try cigarettes and alcohol to begin with. That might mean fewer are going on to try the harder stuff. In 1996, about half of 8th graders surveyed had never tried a cigarette; today it’s 10 percent. Around the same time, about 56 percent of 8th graders had tried alcohol, and today it’s less than a quarter.

Also, cigarettes and alcohol are harder to get now than they used to be. “We’ve seen considerable drop of availability, particularly for alcohol and cigarettes, for young people,” adds Johnston. “I think that’s largely a result of efforts on the parts of states states and communities to reduce access. Nobody had in mind that they might prevent illicit drug use, but maybe there has been an effect.”