Less alcohol, tobacco and cannabis among college students

Successive confinements, curfews, classes in half-groups… The pandemic has created a context where “there were fewer parties, fewer opportunities to socialize, which undoubtedly delayed the experiments“, explains to AFP Julien Morel d’Arleux, the director of the French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) who reveals a survey carried out among 2,000 third-grade students during the first quarter of 2021.

A significant drop in experimentation with alcoholic beverages, tobacco cigarettes and cannabis

The Covid-19 epidemic has thus “accentuated the downward trends observed over the past ten years“among the youngest, he adds. An “encouraging” development, while France remains among the leading countries consuming psychoactive substances in Europe.

According to the study carried out by anonymous questionnaire, the number of ninth-grade students who had never drunk alcohol doubled between 2010 and 2021, rising from 16.8% to 35.9%. The consumption of an alcoholic drink in the last month, declared by 31.8% of pupils, also reached its lowest level since 2010.

Alcohol remains the most popular psychoactive substance among these college students with 64.1% of experimenters in 2021, compared to 75.3% three years earlier.

Increasingly cheesy, tobacco is also much less appealing: 29.1% of third-grade teenagers say they have already smoked a cigarette, compared to 37.5% in 2018 and 51.8% in 2010. Daily smoking among young people in this age has been divided by four over the past eleven years.

“There is still an effort to be made on sales in tobacconists and shops”, says its director. “In France, there is no culture of checking young people’s identity documents, unlike in Anglo-Saxon countries.”

The study is also concerned about the growing use of electronic cigarettes among the youngest, now more popular than the classic cigarette: 34.2% of third-grade students have already tried it.

The use of cannabis is also in “clear decline”, even if its experimentation “remains early”, according to the OFDT. Less than one in ten ninth graders (9.1%) have ever experienced it, compared to 16.1% in 2018 and 23.9% in 2010.

Accentuated by the pandemic, the decline in the age of experimentation with these substances “has a protective effect in young people“, continues Mr. Morel d’Arleux, because research has shown that the later in life the consumption of psychoactive substances starts, the lower the risk of falling into addiction.

Accessibility to products that remains high

The OFDT, however, warns of the “high accessibility” of these products: 19.5% third-grade students believe that obtaining supplies of cannabis is fairly or very easy, a proportion which rises to 31.5% for tobacco. As for alcohol, one pupil in six has already experienced an episode of drunkenness.

Chicha, nitrous oxide, gambling and gambling: uses and practices that begin in the 3rd class

If the use of chicha also records a sharp decline between 2018 and 2021 (its use in the year drops from 19.1% to 11.9%), it could, for a significant proportion of young people, become a supplementary mode. to the consumption of tobacco cigarettes because it seems to enjoy a more positive image among young people.

The college students were questioned for the first time about their experimentation with nitrous oxide. The results of the survey show that in 2021, 5.5% of 3rd graders say they have already consumed it.

Finally, to the question “How often do you practice the following activities: Play gambling and games of chance (sports betting, scratch games, etc.)? “, 1 out of 4 third-grade schoolboys say they have already played a JAH during the year and 9% say they do so every month, 3% every week, while the sale of these games remains prohibited to minors.