The rate of prescription painkillers, cigarettes, alcohol and synthetic marijuana among teens is declining while teen marijuana use remains stable, according to the 2015 Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey. MTF is an annual survey that measures drug use and attitudes among 8th, 10th and 12th graders. The New York Times reports that for the first time in the survey’s 41-year history, more high school seniors said they smoked marijuana than regular cigarettes. Six percent of seniors reported smoking marijuana every day in 2015 (same as 2014), while 5.5 percent reported smoking cigarettes daily, a drop from 6.7 percent in 2014. The survey also found that 24 percent of all students said they had smoked marijuana in the past year, a rate that remains the same as 10 years ago. However, the rate of the students who said daily marijuana use was harmful decreased greatly, from 58 percent in 2005 to 32 percent in 2015.
The percentage of seniors who said they had used prescription opioids such as Vicodin or OxyContin decreased from 9.5 percent in 2004 to 5.4 percent this year. The newspaper reports that fewer students said the pills were easy to obtain, suggesting that doctors are more cautious in their prescribing of painkillers and adults are keeping the drugs in more secure locations than the family medicine cabinet.
Researchers said 40 percent of respondents had used alcohol in the past year, including 22.5 percent to the point of getting drunk, which were significant decreases from 52 percent and 31 percent ten years ago. The survey also found that many teens appear to be switching from regular cigarettes to e-cigarettes.
“We are heartened to see that most illicit drug use is not increasing, non-medical use of prescription opioids is decreasing, and there is improvement in alcohol and cigarette use rates,” Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse said in a news release. “However, continued areas of concern are the high rate of daily marijuana smoking seen among high school students, because of marijuana’s potential deleterious effects on the developing brains of teenagers, and the high rates of overall tobacco products and nicotine containing e-cigarettes usage.”
