Weed is in and booze is out among U.S. teens, new study finds

There was a "significant" rise in high schoolers vaping and smoking marijuana in 2019, while teen drinking fell significantly and opioid abuse dipped slightly, according to a report Wednesday from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). One in five high school seniors said they vaped weed in the last year and 14 percent did it the previous month, both numbers double the rate from two years ago, the NIDA reports. But there was a 14-point drop in 10th and 12th graders who drank alcohol in the past year, to 37.7 percent from 52.1 percent five years ago, and previous-month misuse of the opioid Oxycontin dropped to 1.7 percent of 12th graders, from 4 percent in 2002.

There was also a 1.2-point drop in the number of high school seniors who said they smoke cigarettes every day, to 2.4 percent from 3.6 percent in 2018, NIDA said, but nearly 12 percent of seniors said they vaped nicotine this year and 25 percent said they had vaped nicotine in the last month. The rise in vaping, both nicotine and THC, was especially worrisome to public health officials, given the newly uncovered dangers of vaping. As of Friday, USA Today reports, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted 2,409 cases of vaping-related lung injury and 52 deaths.

"Teens are clearly attracted to vaping products, which are often concentrated amounts of drugs disguised as electronic gadgets," says NIDA director Dr. Nora Volkow, a psychiatrist. "Their growing popularity threatens to undo years of progress protecting the health of adolescents in the U.S." Dr. Flora Sadri-Azarbayejani, the medical director of an addiction clinic, tells USA Today that teens say they use weed to combat anxiety and "to calm down," though "the ones with really long term use develop anxiety from it ... the opposite of what they want."

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