According to this survey, conducted by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies, more and more 17-year-olds have never drunk alcohol. The propensity to smoke or consume cannabis also declines.
Less than one out of two 17-year-olds (46.5%) say they have smoked at least one cigarette in their lifetime, the French Observatory for Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) announced on Thursday March 9 in its Survey. on health and consumption during the call for defense preparation*. They were 59% in 2017.
Smoking has been declining among young people since the previous survey in 2017. Thus in 2022, 15.6% of 17-year-old adolescents consume tobacco daily (at least one cigarette per day), compared to 25.1% five years earlier.
E-cigarette consumption is on the rise
Electronic cigarette consumption has increased between 2017 and 2022: last year, almost 6 out of 10 17-year-olds (56.9%) had already tried electronic cigarettes, compared to 52.4% in 2017. They were 6.2% to vape regularly in 2022, against 1.9% in 2017. This corresponds to an increase of 226%. These increases are “driven by a very marked increase in female consumption”. “For the first time, the levels of experimentation, use during the month and daily use (6.2%) of the electronic cigarette exceed those of tobacco cigarettes”, finds the survey. It reveals an increasingly precocious experimentation: the age of the first electronic cigarette of young people aged 17 in 2022 was on average 15 years old, compared to 15.4 years old in 2017.
According to this survey, more and more 17-year-olds have never drunk alcohol: they were thus nearly one in five in 2022 (19.4%), compared to 14.3% in 2017. The Observatory also notes a decline in drunkenness: 50.4% of 17-year-olds had already been drunk at least once in their life in 2017, compared to 45.9% in 2022.
The OFDT notes a sharp decrease in the use of cannabis in eight years, regardless of the frequency of use. While almost half of 17-year-olds (47.8%) had already experimented with cannabis in 2014, they are only 29.9% in 2022. For the first time, the Observatory looked at the consumption of cannabidiol (CBD). According to the survey, 17.1% of 17-year-old adolescents have already used CBD and 14% have consumed it in the last twelve months.
More alcohol among apprentices
The survey also examines the differences in consumption according to school status, deemed “more significant” in terms of smoking. 43.5% of 17-year-olds who have left the school system smoke daily, compared to 22.5% of 17-year-old general and technological high school students. “The consumption of alcoholic beverages appears to be more widespread among apprentices”, observes the OFDT. According to the Observatory, they are 18.2% to recognize a regular use of alcohol, against 5.9% of students in general and technological high schools.
The Observatory sees in this sharp decline in the consumption of psychoactive substances a “profound change in the perception of these uses, linked to the denormalization of tobacco and the change in the status of alcohol, which would no longer be systematically perceived as an essential dimension of the party in the eyes of new generations of adolescents“. The OFDT thus welcomes “a favorable development in terms of public health”, but nevertheless insists on the context of the coronavirus health crisis and the confinements which may have had an effect on these uses. “The ESCAPAD survey allows us to see that not only has this decline in experimentation not, for the moment, led to a catch-up period, but that these lesser uses seem to be permanently inscribed in the behavior of the adolescent population”.
*Methodology: The ESCAPAD survey was carried out in March 2022 among young people aged 17.4 on average, of French nationality. This anonymous survey is based on a self-administered questionnaire during Defense and Citizenship Day (JDC). 22,430 completed questionnaires were used.