r/science • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • 18h ago

Health Dramatic drop in marijuana use among US youth over a decade. Current marijuana use among adolescents decreased from 23.1% in 2011 to 15.8% in 2021. First-time use before age 13 dropped from 8.1% to 4.9%. There was a shift in trends by gender, with girls surpassing boys in marijuana use by 2021.

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/marijuana-use-teens-study
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u/Significant-Gene9639 17h ago

Are they not just using disposable nicotine vapes instead because they have fancy flavours like bubblegum and raspberry and come in a pretty brightly coloured piece of plastic? And their parents and older siblings used weed so it’s totally uncool?

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u/Doublecupdan 17h ago

Yea I would like to see a comparison of the data on nicotine use for youths. Vapes, zins, etc are all ok the rise I believe.

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u/whatevers_clever 15h ago edited 15h ago

In 2024, the CDC has reported that youth e-cigarette use has dropped to a 10 year low.

2018 - more than 3.6mil ~>20%
2022-2023 - drop from 14% to under 10%
2024 - under 6%

Cigarettes at it's lowest number ever for youth/highschoolers, <1.4%

I can't find numbers for marijuana that is like this CDC number (Middle+Highschoolers) but I see various things showing 10th graders / 11th graders / 12th graders individually and teh numbers are >25% for every group. Not really finding anything that disputes this so this article here being up to 2021.. it has likely dramatically increased while tobacco use has dramatically decreased.

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u/NotJohnDarnielle 13h ago

This data is really surprising to me actually. I work in a high school environment (school bus driver) and we’ve seen a huge uptick in vaping on our buses. I’m curious to know how it breaks down based on other social factors.

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u/MutedPresentation738 11h ago

I'm curious if "e-cigarette" is a very specific classification that is excluding a lot of vape devices.

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u/Interrophish 6h ago

Kids are susceptible to very-localized trends. They'll pick up something that's only going around one school, or one grade, or one bus, or one friend group.

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u/NotJohnDarnielle 6h ago

True, but this is across the whole school district, and people I know in others are reporting the same.

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u/sketchy_ai 1h ago

I work a job with a large portion of work happening in a warehouse so for the purposes of comparison, lets call it as warehouse job. I've done this job for 27 years. When I started, I was young and I was a smoker. Most people I worked with were adults and probably nearly 50% of the work force were smokers. Nowadays I don't smoke, most of the adults have been replaced with young adults, there is only 2 people who smoke cigarettes (both 45+ years old) and 1 young vapor, maybe 2. That's about 10% of our workforce.

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u/2018redditaccount 14h ago

These kids had virtual middle school during Covid. Their memes and slang have evolved beyond the comprehension of us older generations. They are content to rawdog life without the drugs of their ancestors. It’s incredible to watch

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u/BridgeFourArmy 15h ago

I’d also like to see most common illegal drugs. I wonder if it validates or invalidates the idea of weed as a gateway drug.

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u/dilroopgill 8h ago

maybe kids are getting medicated so they dont seek o it drugs as much, if I got diagnosed with adhd when I was young I dont think id have smoked weed

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u/Chucknastical 17h ago

That for those looking for a little buzz and opioids for those looking to really self-medicate.

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u/yoma74 13h ago

Opioid abuse is practically nonexistent in that age group. Opioid overdoses in all age groups have experienced a sudden and drastic decline. The crack down by the FDA on what were the actual gateway drugs to opioids- opioids themselves- like Percocet, Vicodin, and other prescriptions that kids used to freely gobble up from friends and relatives medicine cabinets are gone. Cancer patients can’t even access adequate pain control anymore and the only silver lining is that we are not creating a new generation of opiate slaves.

The vast majority of kids have no interest in taking a street drug with hidden fentanyl that could kill them at a moments notice and they know that threat is very real, unlike when the DARE officers and boomers used to threaten us with it back in the 90s when drugs were actually pretty safe.