There are many clichés circulating around drug consumption among young people, that they use drugs earlier and in greater quantities than their elders, but what is really the case? To find out, we are conducting the survey on health and consumption during the Defense Call and Preparation Day (ESCAPAD).
[Article issu de The Conversation, écrit par Stanislas Spilka, Responsable unité DATA, Observatoire français des drogues et tendances addictives]
The latter has been conducted since 2000 by the French Observatory on Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT) in collaboration with the Directorate of National and Youth Services (DSNJ). Carried out for the first time in 2000, it has been carried out nine times and our latest results date from 2022.
It mainly concerns substance consumption, but other health themes, depending on the year, are addressed in the questionnaire such as addictive behaviors without substances (gambling, for example), mental health, disability or eating behaviors.
ESCAPAD interviews all adolescents summoned to the defense and citizenship day (JDC) during a period of 15 days. In 2022, 23,701 adolescents present, aged 17.4 years on average, received an anonymous self-administered questionnaire between March 21 and 25, 2022. Random sampling, a participation rate of 84% (present vs. summoned) or still a response rate greater than 95% (present vs valid questionnaires) guarantees the good representativeness of the sample of respondents. The survey thus makes it possible to estimate, among other epidemiological data, the levels of consumption of licit or illicit drugs among young French people aged 17 and to monitor changes over two decades.
Levels of experimentation
The first illicit substance experimented with during adolescence is cannabis; in 2022, 29.9% of 17-year-old adolescents had already used it at least once in their life. In comparison, the levels of experimentation with other illicit products such as cocaine, ecstasy (or MDMA), heroin, etc. are much lower and less than 2%, the highest level of experimentation observed in 2022 for ecstasy.
These levels all mark a significant drop compared to 2017. Behind ecstasy, cocaine (excluding freebase/crack) is the second substance experimented with with 1.4% of adolescents aged 17, followed by hallucinogenic drugs (LSD, mushrooms , ketamine) around 1%, with experimentation with heroin and crack remaining residual with levels below 1%. Ultimately, having already consumed at least one of the eight substances questioned concerns, in 2022, 3.9% of young French people aged 17.
It should be noted that experimentation with these products occurs later than that of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, i.e. after the age of 16 on average.
Experimentation with these substances increased continuously until 2014, before beginning a decline which has continued until today. Behind this generalized downward trend lie dynamics specific to each substance. For example, if the levels for cocaine increased regularly before falling, those for the use of ecstasy (or MDMA) have experienced erratic variations over the last two decades. These variations are difficult to explain, but can be linked to fashion phenomena which can sometimes be ephemeral during adolescence.
Academic status
Like the consumption of alcohol or cannabis, these experiments with illicit products (other than cannabis) remain a little more the work of boys even if, given the levels, it is difficult to conclude that the behaviors between girls and boys can diverge or converge. The uses of LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms, however, appear to be slightly more marked by gender.
They are, moreover, very strongly associated with educational status, young people leaving the school system (adolescents out of school, in civic service or, more rarely, in employment) are the most numerous to use at least one other illicit drug (11.3% experimentation), ahead of apprentices (6.9%) and high school students (3.5%). These differences can, in part, be explained by both financial autonomy (even if it remains limited) or less parental control.
It should be noted that the relationship between substance use and early exit from the school system is not a one-way causality: if the effect of these substances on academic performance in adolescence is well established, the problems leading to to an early exit from the school system generally appear well before the first use of illicit psychoactive substances (after 16 years), and even constitute a determinant.
This 2022 photograph of the use of illicit psychoactive substances among 17-year-old adolescents reflects a favorable development in terms of public health. If the trends observed are the fruit of dynamics at work over the past ten years, it should not be forgotten that they come after two unique years, marked by the health crisis linked to Covid-19 and several confinements of the population which have seriously disrupted juvenile sociability. This could have contributed to the decline observed between 2017 and 2022 in experiments, which mainly take place in sociable and festive contexts.
New data confirms the decline of cannabis among middle and high school students
With the aim of completing the observation of the use of psychoactive substances in the French population, the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies published in 2024 the results of two other surveys carried out in 2022 and 2023.
The first, the EnCLASS National Survey of Middle and High School Adolescents on Health and Substances, carried out among 7,237 middle school and 4,649 high school students, notably confirmed on the one hand the decline in experimentation with tobacco and cannabis among middle school students and, on the other hand, the drop in tobacco, alcohol or cannabis consumption among high school students.
The second, the Survey on Representations, Opinions and Perceptions of Psychotropic Drugs (EROPP) questioned, in 2023, 14,984 people representative of the adult population aged 18 to 75. Its results revealed that, while the share of cannabis experimenters has continued to increase and now concerns more than half of the French population aged 18 to 64, consumption over the last 12 months has not increased overall. since 2017 (date of the last comparable survey).
Cocaine, ecstasy or MDMA, heroin, amphetamines… are increasing in the rest of the population
For other illicit substances (cocaine, ecstasy or MDMA, heroin, amphetamines, etc.), levels of use have increased significantly over the same period, particularly for stimulants. Thus, almost one in ten adults have already used powder cocaine at least once in their life, and one in twelve ecstasy (or MDMA).
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