The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a great many things in our society, and one unexpected change is how it’s impacted teenage drug abuse. According to a recent Monitoring the Future survey, drug use among eighth, 10th, and 12th graders in the United States decreased significantly in 2021. While there has been a general decline in the use of substances such as alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco among teenagers since 1975, this current decline follows a sharp increase that occurred at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
The decrease in teenage drug use in 2021 was far more dramatic than it has been in recent years, which comes as a surprise considering how every other aspect of teenage life has been changed by the pandemic. Naturally, the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has taken notice and plans to identify the factors that contributed to the decreased drug use.
The results of the survey were gathered from a large sample size. Over 50 percent of respondents were white, while 11.3 percent identified as black, 16.7 percent were Hispanic, five percent were Asian, less than one percent were Native American, and 13.8 percent identified as mixed race.
The survey did require the teenagers to self-report their drug use, and approximately 60 percent completed the survey from home. This may have skewed some of the numbers if the respondents didn’t want to be entirely truthful in their reporting. These factors are often taken into consideration in surveys such as this, and even then the rate of substance abuse still declined compared to the previous year. This decrease in drug use occurred despite substances such as marijuana being as readily available as ever.
A similar survey by NIDA found that the rate of substance abuse in children between the ages of 10 and 14 remained relatively stable during the pandemic. It was found that the substances that were being used by young people in this age range shifted in 2020 during the pandemic. The use of alcohol declined in this age group, while the use of prescription medications and nicotine products showed to be on the rise.