They assumed the peer groups and cliques that tried to make marijuana, alcohol and vaping products “cool” would rapidly reunite once schools opened again.
They assumed an inevitable resurgence in toxic substance use among the young.
But it didn’t happen.
The 2024 Monitoring the Future (MTF) study (aka the National High School Senior Survey) shows that, even as the years pass and the pandemic recedes in the rearview mirror, the takeaway is that the decline in drug and alcohol use among young people may just be permanent.
MTF has monitored drug and alcohol use among youth since 1975.
Consider the survey results: 67 percent of twelfth-graders reported no alcohol, marijuana or nicotine use in the past 30 days, the highest percentage since 2017. Rates of alcohol use among twelfth-graders dropped from 75 percent in 1997 to 42 percent in 2024, while marijuana use reached its lowest level in three decades. Nicotine vaping has also decreased among twelfth-graders, from 35 percent in 2020 to 21 percent in 2024.
Meanwhile, a new product made its entrance on the toxic habit stage about 10 years ago: nicotine pouches. Promoted on social media and available online and in stores, they’re the size and shape of those little “DO NOT EAT” things found inside dry food containers. Taken orally and held between the lip or cheek, the nicotine—no tobacco, just the pure nicotine—is absorbed directly into the mucous membranes, then the bloodstream.
Often flavored with kid-friendly berry, cinnamon, citrus and peppermint essences—with no telltale smoke like vaping or cigarettes, making it difficult for a parent or teacher to detect—the nicotine pouches have gained in popularity among young people, while other drug items have declined.
But even here, the researchers found a silver lining. While acknowledging that nicotine pouch use has increased between 2023 and 2024—from 3 to 6 percent among twelfth-graders—overall rates were low compared with marijuana use, vaping and alcohol consumption. Also, compared with the skyrocketing initial statistics when vaping first exploded on the scene—19 percent in 2017 to a pre-pandemic peak of 35 percent in 2020—the excitement generated by nicotine pouches is minimal indeed.
MTF has monitored drug and alcohol use among youth since 1975. This year’s findings represent its forty-seventh annual report. Researchers were fully prepared to see upticks in percentages across the board as “substance use could have quickly rebounded to pre-pandemic levels when students returned to school…. The 2024 results indicate that the lowered levels of student drug use after the pandemic onset are lasting and, in fact, continue to drop even further.”
The temptation is to look at the figures, heave a sigh and chill out—somewhat akin to the promoted result of inhaling a toxic substance. But, like the artificially induced high of drugs and alcohol, that sensation is false and dangerously temporary.
Whether or not this oasis in the drug crisis among our youth is here to stay, those who profit by the poisoning of others will not rest—so neither should we. Just as they will see the plummeting statistics as a signal to pour the coals on the marketing and pushing of their products, so should we take the opportunity to up the ante on educating our most valuable demographic—our young—on the truth about drugs.
