Marijuana is now more popular than cigarettes with high school seniors

Monitoring the Future, now in its 41st year, surveyed 44,892 students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades at 382 schools nationwide. The survey, published Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health, was conducted by researchers at the University of MI. The numbers of teens interested in marijuana, however, is on the rise.

“We are heartened to see that most illicit drug use is not increasing, non-medical use of prescription opioids is decreasing, and there is improvement in alcohol and cigarette use rates”, said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the NIH’s Institute of Drug Abuse, in a press release.

“That’s what’s been surprising to me and other researchers: We’ve now had five years of consistent declines in perceived harmfulness and the use rates have been reasonably steady – or dropping slightly this year”, Compton said.

“We are seeing a drop in the use of prescription painkillers”, he said. “Efforts to prevent drug use from ever starting are particularly important as we work to reduce the rising number of drug overdoses across the country”. “Criminalization isn’t the way to encourage young people to make healthy choices; regulating a legal market and honest, reality-based education is”. “However, the percent of underage individuals drinking still remains unacceptably high”.

A national survey of almost 45,000 youth has unveiled that cigarette use among teens has touched all-time low, but their preference for e-cigarettes has not faded. Daily cigarette use has fallen even more steeply, with just 5.5 percent of 12 graders reporting daily smoking in 2015. Among high school seniors, more than 38 percent said they used an illicit drug in the past year, with 15 percent saying they used an illicit drug other than marijuana. Fewer than a third (32%) of seniors saw a great risk, down from 58% in 2005, and similar decreases obtained for 8th and 10th graders.

Use of MDMA (known as Ecstasy or Molly) and LSD is generally stable or down. That prompted the deputy director of the National Institution on Drug Abuse, Dr. Wilson Compton, to tell U.S. News it may be time to reconsider the connection. But they also understand that it is not okay for them to use it. For decades, teens had an artificially high perception of risk that stemmed from exaggerations and scare tactics.

Cigarette smoking has declined among teens.

“A lot of marijuana laws have changed over the past five years, but rates of teen marijuana use have not”. The students were found to give preference to e-cigarettes over normal cigarettes.

Out of all, 9% in the eighth grade said that they have used e-cigarettes in the last 30 days and 4% said of using normal cigarettes. Most say they inhaled flavoring alone and many admitted they were unsure what they inhaled. Furthermore, some products labeled nicotine-free may actually contain nicotine.

The students surveyed favored e-cigarettes, which heat liquid into a vapor that can be inhaled, over traditional cigarettes. Teen pot use stabilized before legalization and hasn’t increased since. 40% of teens surveyed were revealed to have gotten drunk in the past year.

The rate of monthly marijuana use by 10th-graders appears to have dropped significantly from 2014 (and 2010) to 2015. Eighth and 10th graders were added to the survey in 1991.

The decline of most drug use and smoking among teens may show that educating teenagers about the hazards of drugs can impact their behavior.

This shift in how risky teens think marijuana is occurring as more states debate further legalized marijuana use among adults. MTF is funded under grant number DA001411.