A study on the consumption of psychoactive substances in adolescents published on January 12 indicates that the context of the pandemic has contributed to reducing the early consumption of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco among minors.
The French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) has just made public a study carried out with 2,000 third-grade students during the first quarter of 2021. Unveiled this Wednesday, January 12, this exceptional component of the national survey in college and high school among adolescents on health and substances (EnCLASS) is a harbinger of good newss.
The study reveals a marked decline in the consumption of psychoactive substances such as cannabis, alcohol or tobacco between 2018 and 2021. In question, the context of a global pandemic: for Julien Morel d’Arleux, director of the OFDT, the health crisis has indeed “accentuated the downward trends observed over the past ten years” among teenagers. It appears that the various measures put in place by the government to counter the Covid-19 epidemic – confinements, curfew, distance learning – have impacted the process of socialization in the youngest, thus reducing the opportunities for initiation and consumption of psychoactive substances.
An alcohol experiment down 10 points
First time experimenting with alcohol dropped 10 points in 3 years, dropping from 75.3% in 2018 to 64.1% in 2021. Alcohol consumption in the last month is also down 10 points.
While these numbers are very positive, they have accelerated a noticeable downward trend over the past 10 years : between 2010 and 2021, twice as many students have never drunk alcohol, going from 35.9% to 16.8%.
Results concerning alcohol to be put into perspective, since alcohol remains the most popular psychoactive substance among college students: they are always 64.1% to experience it in 2021. Excessive behavior is also notable, since 1 in 6 students report having experienced a period of drunkenness in their lifetime, a proportion that remains the same between 2018 and 2021.
An initiation to tobacco down 8 points
On the tobacco side, the same positive observation : initiation to tobacco products (including cigarettes and shisha) increases from 43.6% in 2018 to 35.1% in 2021, i.e. down 8 points. Other encouraging data: the rate of teenagers who have never tried tobacco goes from 56.6% to 51.3%, i.e. a drop of 5 points.
Figures that confirm the acceleration of a decline for 11 years: experimentation with cigarettes fell by 44% among young people between 2010 and 2021, and there are also 4 times fewer daily smokers.
Cannabis experimentation and consumption almost halved
Regarding cannabis, the results of the survey are even more telling : the first experimentation with cannabis has dropped 7 points, going from 16.1% to 9.1% between 2018 and 2021, and it therefore concerns today less than 1 student in 10.
Another indicator confirms this trend over the last 3 years: cannabis consumption in the past month has been halved, dropping from 6.7% to 3.9%.
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Like tobacco and alcohol, the early use of cannabis has fallen sharply over the past ten years : 9.1% of 3rd year students have experienced it in 2021, i.e. almost 3 times fewer experimenters than in 2010 (23.9%).
More “fancy” practices to watch out for
In adolescents, fashion effect necessarily impacts behavior: if tobacco is less popular today than 10 years ago, the study warns against the rise of two phenomena considered more “trendy”.
Among tobacco product users, 6.2% are dedicated exclusively to the use of shisha in 2021, a figure that has hardly changed in 3 years (6.1% in 2018). A practice which therefore constitutes a point of vigilance for the rapporteurs of the survey.
The craze for electronic cigarettes also worries, with usage levels also remaining stable between 2018 and 2021. It is also the first time, in an adolescent population, that these rates are higher than those of tobacco cigarettes, whether in terms of experimentation (34.2%) or recent use (13.9%).
The conclusions of the survey are generally very positive and bear witness to an acceleration in the decline in the distribution of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis among young people.
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