[OC] Tracking the decrease in smoking, alcohol and marijuana use by teenagers since 1976



[OC] Tracking the decrease in smoking, alcohol and marijuana use by teenagers since 1976

Posted by shadow_spinner0

33 comments
  1. there’s no way teenagers are smoking less weed now than 40 years ago. having grown up in Canada (26 years old) it’s impossible for me to wrap my head around that. I would guess that at least 80% of HS seniors have smoked weed at least once.

  2. That’s great! Sadly some of it probably comes from everyone being broke… but good side effect in anycase.

  3. The legal age to drink alcohol was still 18 in a lot of states in 1976 so that at least in part contributes to why it was so high back then

  4. Wish there was a plot point of overall mental health

    Not saying the use of these substances increase mental health (it most likely has an adverse affect) but we’re seeing anxiety, depression and other mental health issues showing up in each passing generation. A rise in those statistics is also probably due to a greater understanding and more accessible resources for diagnosis and hopefully help for children/adolescence.

  5. Crazy that goddamn everybody used to smoke. I’m so glad I grew up in the era I did. Now if Gen Z could have not got themselves addicted to vaping…

  6. Seriousl ? This is self-reported? Now do self reporting of politicians taking or giving bribes.

  7. I’m curious how much of this has to do with kids having no faith in confidentiality.  what they are told will be confidential, is almost never actually confidential.  In the 80’s we didn’t have phones and Google spying, schools flipping on our web cams, and people being accused of murder because they did a DNA test to see how Italian they were.  

  8. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be as low of a figure if it was “nicotine” instead of “smoking” (which also doesn’t make much sense, because you usually smoke marijuana, too).

  9. I remember getting this survey mid-90s and I answered NO to everything even though I’d done all of the above cause I didn’t trust the anonymity of a survey given at school about all the things they tell you not to do at school….

  10. It would be interesting to see the trends for various age groups. I would suspect the smoking decrease follows population-wide trends

  11. I also think this has alot to do with them being mostly loners. When you are not interacting with people why drink, or smoke together.

  12. Weed use among teens is down in Canada since legalization. Almost as if having honest and open conversations about things like this vice simply relying on prohibition is the best approach.

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