Teen drug use has not recovered from its decline during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the results of a large survey released Tuesday.
About two-thirds of this year’s 12th graders said they had not used alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes or e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. This is the highest proportion abstinent since the annual survey began measuring abstinence in 2017.
Among 10th graders, 80% said they had not used any of those substances recently, another record. Among 8th graders, 90% did not use any of them, the same as in the previous survey.
The only significant increase occurred in nicotine packets. About 6% of 12th graders said they had used them in the past year, compared to about 3% in 2023.
Whether this represents the start of a new public health problem is unclear. Richard Miech of the University of Michigan, who leads the survey, said: “It’s hard to know if we’re seeing the beginning of something or not.”
The federally funded Monitoring the Future survey has been conducted annually since 1975. This year’s findings are based on responses from approximately 24,000 8th, 10th and 12th grade students in schools across the country. The survey is “one of the best, if not the best” source of national data on teen substance use, said Noah Kreski, a researcher at Columbia University who has studied teen drug use.
At the start of the pandemic, students across the country were told not to go to schools and to avoid parties or other gatherings. They were at home, under parental supervision. Alcohol and drug use of all kinds has declined because experimentation tends to occur with friends, driven by peer pressure, experts say.
With lockdowns ending, “I think everyone was expecting at least a partial rebound,” Miech said.
Even before the pandemic, there were long-term declines in the use of cigarettes, alcohol and various types of drugs among adolescents. Experts theorized that children were staying home and communicating on smartphones rather than gathering in groups, where they sometimes tried illicit substances.
But marijuana use was not declining before the pandemic. And vaping was on the rise. It was only during the pandemic that these two also saw lasting declines.
Some experts wonder if the pandemic lockdowns had a deeper influence.
Miech noted that many teens who experiment with e-cigarettes or drugs start in 9th grade, sometimes because older teens are doing it. But children who were 9th graders during lockdowns never picked up the habit, and never had the opportunity to become negative influencers of their younger peers, he said.
“The pandemic stopped the cycle of new children coming in and being recruited into drug use,” Miech said.
Mental health can also be a factor. There were increased reports of depression and anxiety in children after the pandemic began. Depression is often associated with substance use, but some people with depression and anxiety are very cautious about drugs, said Dr. Duncan Clark, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh who researches substance use in children.
“Some teens with anxiety are worried about the effects of substances. They may also be socially inhibited and have fewer opportunities to use drugs,” Clark said. “It’s a complicated relationship.”
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