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The profile of cannabis smokers has evolved over the years. According to the results of the 2021 edition of the Health Barometer survey of Public Health France on the use of illicit psychoactive substances by adults, carried out in collaboration with the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Trends (OFDT), consumers are on average older.
Cannabis is the most widely used drug in France. It is often associated with joints smoked by adolescents or young adults, as part of a festive consumption between friends. However, the trend seems to have changed. Indeed, whereas they were on average 25 years old at the beginning of the 1990s, they are now on average 33 years old today.
“While cannabis consumption remains generally higher among those under 35, the average age of current cannabis users continues to increase: it rose from 25.1 years to 32.8 years between 1992 and 2021.“says the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT).
Young people less interested in cannabis
According to one of the co-authors of this work, Stanislas Spilka, head of statistical surveys at the OFDT, young people are no longer so interested in cannabis use. “What we observe is a lower consumption among those under 25, while beyond 35-40 years, we have seen users appear who had consumed in the 2000s” he indicates.
Two factors can explain this phenomenon. “On the one hand, the aging of the generations of adults who claimed to consume at the end of the 1990s – and some of whom continued to consume – who are currently between 40 and 50 years old” advances the OFDT. “And, on the other hand, the arrival in the consumption ages of the generation born in the 2000s which turns out to be less consuming than the previous ones”.
A drug still widely used
Cannabis also remains the most widely used and distributed drug in France. Nearly one in two French people (47.3%) acknowledge having used cannabis at least once in their life.
However, the survey notes that after “two periods of marked increase in usage levels (1992-2000 and 2010-2014), the share of current users (at least one usage in the last 12 months) stabilized”. But despite these figures, remember that France remains the European country where 15-34 year olds smoke the most cannabis.