Majority of Teens Aren’t Using Marijuana or Alcohol, Survey Says
We have some holiday cheer for parents of teens: In the US, teen drug and alcohol use is continuing to stay low in the post-pandemic years. Even better? Abstaining from alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, and e-cigarettes has never been more popular. There’s only one substance on the rise, and it’s a trendy one: nicotine pouches.
All this new info is from the latest edition of the Monitoring the Future survey, a nationwide annual study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This year’s data comes from 24,257 surveys from students in 272 schools across the country.
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The survey found that 67 percent of 12th graders this year reported not using alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, or e-cigarettes for the past 30 days — the largest proportion since abstinence was added to the survey in 2017, per AP. Younger teens showed a similar trend, with 80 percent of 10th graders abstaining (up from 2023, and another record high) and over 89 percent of eighth graders abstaining (stable compared to 2023). Almost every substance on the survey — including alcohol, marijuana, cigarettes, vaping, and narcotics like Vicodin and OxyContin — showed either declining or stable rates of use among teens.
The one notable exception is nicotine pouches. This covers popular brands like Zyn as well as products like Dryft, Loop, Lyft, Nordic Spirit, On!, Rouge, Rush, Velo, and ZoneX. The pouches contain powdered nicotine and are placed under the upper lip and in front of the gum. Unlike nicotine gum, they’re non-chewable; unlike chewing tobacco, you don’t have to spit; and unlike vapes, they’re subtle and easy to hide. Many pouches come in fruit flavors, giving them a better taste than many other tobacco products (and revealing a similarity to vapes, whose fruity flavors hooked teens).
You have to be 21 years old to legally purchase nicotine pouches, but that hasn’t deterred some teens. While overall use remained low, a larger proportion of 10th graders (3.4 percent, up from 1.9 percent) and 12th graders (5.9 percent, up from 2.9 percent) reporting using nicotine pouches in the past 12 months compared to 2023. Use among eighth graders remained stable at 0.6 percent.
Social media could be at least partially to blame, given the rise of “Zynfluencers” — young people on social media showing how they use Zyn and calling out its benefits. Sen. Chuck Schumer blamed the companies producing nicotine pouches for “seem[ing] to lock their sights on teens and use social media to hook them.” (In a previous statement to SheKnows, Zyn said it does not use social media influencers to market the product and its social media pages are only open to 21+ audiences.)
Of the rising use numbers found in the survey, researchers said the size of the issue is unclear. “It’s hard to know if we’re seeing the start of something, or not,” Richard Miech, the research professor at the University of Michigan who leads the survey, told AP.
Overall, the numbers remain encouraging, but parents should continue to stay vigilant and keep talking to their kids about drug and alcohol use, so you’re prepared when the next trend hits their FYP.
Before you go, make sure to shop these must-have skincare brands for teens:
