After two years of health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, one might have feared a rise in drug use among adolescents. It is not so. On the contrary, 17-year-olds consume less tobacco, alcohol and cannabis. And this trend, which began in 2014, accelerated between 2017 and 2022. This is the main lesson of the tenth edition of the Escapad survey (the first took place in 2000), by written questionnaire, conducted in March 2022 from a representative sample of 23,701 girls and boys participating in Defense and Citizenship Day, the results of which were published on Thursday March 9 by the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT).
Tobacco. In 2022, less than one in two 17-year-olds (46.5%) said they had smoked at least one cigarette in their life. They were 59% in 2017 and 77.6% in 2000 during the first survey. The share of those who smoke daily has shrunk further, from 25.1% in 2017 to 15.6% in 2022. “This proves that the various political initiatives of prevention, price, sale prohibited to minors, ban on smoking in public places… have played their full role, even if the proportion of young people who smoke remains high compared to other European countries” , notes Stanislas Spilka, head of the scientific data unit at the OFDT and co-author of the survey.
While young people are smoking less, the use of electronic cigarettes, measured since the Escapad 2014 survey, has on the other hand been on the rise since 2017, particularly among girls. More than one out of two teenagers has already tried it and daily use has tripled, rising from 1.9% to 6.2%. “It’s not unusual, says Stanislas Spilka, especially since this attractive object for adolescents can present a risk of addiction, particularly to nicotine. »
On February 28, the Academy of Medicine alerted on the puffthis new disposable electronic cigarette: “With its competitive price, its attractive packaging, its sweet and fruity flavors, its availability in a large number of places (tobacco shops, kiosks, restaurants, even mass distribution or decoration stores), it is easily accessible. Discreet, it is easy to use, including on school grounds. “It induces a phenomenon of addiction to the gesture of vaping, which can represent a new mode of entry into addiction to cigarettes, then reinforced by the use of puffs containing nicotine”, continues the learned society. According to her, in July 2022, one in ten teenagers aged 13 to 16 had already tried the puff.
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