We understand better why drinking songs no longer have the success they had in the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, young people drink less, smoke less and take drugs less, according to data from the latest Escapad survey conducted by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) with “23,701 girls and boys aged 17.4 on average”. The study was conducted in March 2022 with young people participating in Defense and Citizenship Day. Here are the main lessons.
The cigarette is less and less cool
In 2022, less than one in two young people (46.5%) had tried cigarettes at the age of 17, whereas nearly 3 in 5 (59%) had done so in 2017. It’s simple, “Tobacco consumption fell sharply between 2017 and 2022, regardless of the frequency of consumption considered”, observes the OFDT. Thus, daily tobacco use concerns 15.6% of those questioned, compared with 25.1% five years earlier. The decline is impressive. No significant differences between the sexes in terms of experimentation and recent use, but a lower proportion of girls smoke daily (14.2%) or intensely, i.e. more than 10 cigarettes per day (2.3% against 5% for boys). On the other hand, young women have more recourse to electronic cigarettes with “a level of daily use multiplied by six over the period (6.3% against 0.9%)”, notes the OFDT.
Alcohol no longer irrigates young people
Same story since, according to Escapad, “alcohol use among 17-year-olds is characterized by a general decline in all indicators of use”. Better, “in 2022, nearly one in five adolescents (19.4%) said they had never drunk alcohol in their life”. Similarly, the significant punctual alcoholizations (API) more commonly called binge drinking or biture express, fall in young people. Thus, only 36.6% of young people had an IPD in the last 30 days, compared to 44% in 2017. Here again, as with cigarettes, regular alcohol consumption is more significant in boys than in girls . Thus, they “are half as likely to report drinking 10 times or more during the month”.
Since I no longer smoke weed
As Stupeflip, young people have given up smoking. “In 2022, the decline in cannabis use that began in 2014 is confirmed, regardless of the frequency of use: experimentation is down nearly 10 points compared to 2017 (29.9% compared to 39.1% ),” says the observatory. Similarly, he notes “a male predominance that is all the stronger as the frequency of consumption is high”. With regard to other drugs, here too, use is down and only concerns 3.9% of young people compared to 6.8% five years earlier. Subjects of intense media attention, the lean or purple drank (codeine syrup mixed with soda) and nitrous oxide are only used by a few out of 100 young people.
Differences according to social status
“The Escapad 2022 data confirms higher levels of frequent use among adolescents in learning and those who have left the school system compared to students enrolled in secondary school”, notes the OFDT. Which is striking for tobacco. Thus “daily use is distributed along a gradient ranging from 10.1% among students in general and technological high schools to 22.1% among students in vocational high schools, then from 38.6% among apprentices to 43.5 % among young people out of the school system. The most socially fragile are also the most vulnerable to addictive behavior.