Substance use among teenagers continues to be stable or decline across all categories of drugs, continuing a downward trend that began during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data compiled by the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
“This trend in the reduction of substance use among teenagers is unprecedented,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIDA, in a statement. “We must continue to investigate factors that have contributed to this lowered risk of substance use to tailor interventions to support the continuation of this trend.”
Conducted annually by researchers at the University of Michigan, the MTF study is given to students in eighth, tenth, and twelfth grades and asks about their use and perceptions of various substances. From February through June 2024, MTF investigators collected 24,257 surveys from students enrolled across 272 public and private schools in the United States.
Adolescents most commonly reported use of alcohol, nicotine vaping, and cannabis in the 12 months prior to the survey, but these rates all declined between 2023 and 2024 for all three grades surveyed, according to the survey data tables.
For instance, 12.9% of eighth graders reported using alcohol in 2024, compared with 15.1% in 2023; 26.1% of tenth graders reported using alcohol in 2024, compared with 30.6% in 2023; and 41.7% of twelfth graders reported using alcohol in 2024, compared with 45.7% in 2023.
Similarly, cannabis use declined for eighth graders from 8.3% in 2023 to 7.2% this year, for tenth graders from 17.8% to 15.9%, and for twelfth graders from 29% to 25.8%. And nicotine vaping decreased by 1.8% for eighth graders and by 2.2% for both tenth and twelfth graders.
“Kids who were in eighth grade at the start of the pandemic will be graduating from high school this year, and this unique cohort has ushered in the lowest rates of substance use we’ve seen in decades,” said Richard A. Miech, Ph.D., research professor at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and team lead for the MTF study.
For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Survey Finds Illicit Drug Use Among Youth Declining While Overdose Deaths Rise.”
(Image: Getty Images/iStock/Drazen Zigic)
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