When do you start drinking and smoking? When do we first experiment with psychotropic substances? And, after the “test”, how many adolescents continue to use it? To these questions, the figures revealed by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT), Thursday January 25, provide a message “overall encouraging”in the words of its director, Guillaume Airagnes: the age of initiations – of “first times” – declines, even though these experiments always begin during the first years of college. And consumption levels continue to decline.
These are two of the main lessons from the national survey of middle and high schools among adolescents on health and substances, called EnClass, carried out by the OFDT and the School of Advanced Studies in Public Health (EHESP) with the support of national education. Some 9,566 middle and high school students participated, by answering an online questionnaire in class, between March and June 2022. This is the second survey of its kind (the first as comprehensive dating back to 2018). Backed by other national and international investigations, EnClass makes it possible to compare the levels of experimentation and dissemination of psychoactive substances.
In detail, as for college students, 43.4% say they have tried alcohol in 2022 compared to 60% in 2018. 11.4% have tried cigarettes in 2022, compared to 21.2% four years ago. earlier. The figures are lower for cannabis, but the trend is no different: they are 5.3% of students, in classes of 4e and 3eto have tested this substance, compared to 6.7% in 2018.
Downward trend
Statistical photography evolves with the school level, particularly during the transition from middle school to high school. Concerning tobacco, experimentation, estimated at 4.6% in 6ethen to 18.8% in 3eincreases to 30% in 2of. For cannabis, 16.3% of grade 2 studentsof say they have consumed it; Nearly one in three declare it in their final year (31.2%). This also applies to the uses ” in the month “ Or “regular” which, during the passage of the 3e at 2ofare experiencing an increase.
Nevertheless, and this is the message insisted on Thursday, when presenting the survey, its two coordinators, Stanislas Spilka, head of the statistical unit of the OFDT, and Emmanuelle Godeau, teacher-researcher at EHESP: overall levels of use of psychoactive substances are down in 2022 compared to 2018. A trend that can be traced over a longer period, since 2010, and which has increased with the Covid-19 health crisis, from 2020.
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