Missing rebound: Youth drug use defies expectations, continues historic decline

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Adolescent drug use continued to drop in 2024, building on and extending the historically large decreases that occurred during the pandemic onset in 2020.

"I expected adolescent drug use would rebound at least partially after the large declines that took place during the pandemic onset in 2020, which were among the largest ever recorded," said Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future study at U-M's Institute for Social Research. 

"Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted. As it turns out, the declines have not only lasted but have dropped further." 

Miech is a principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future Study, which annually surveys eighth, 10th and 12th grade students across the United States.

The number of students who abstained from drug use reached record levels in 2024, with abstention defined as no past 30-day use of alcohol, marijuana or nicotine cigarettes or e-cigarettes. 

The percentage of students who abstained from the use of these drugs in 2024 was 67% in 12th grade (compared to 53% in 2017 when it was first measured), 80% in 10th grade (compared to 69% in 2017) and 90% in eighth grade (compared to 87% in 2017). The increases in abstention from 2023 to 2024 were statistically significant in the 12th and 10th grades.

Declines in drug use in 2024 were evident across alcohol, marijuana and nicotine vaping, which are the three most common forms of substance use by adolescents:

For alcohol, significant decreases in 12th and 10th grades continued a long-standing decline that began in the late 1990s. In 2024, 42% of 12th graders reported using alcohol in the past 12 months, a substantial drop from 75% in 1997. Among 10th graders, the percentage fell to 26% from 65% in 1997; among eighth graders, it dropped to 13% from 46% in 1997. For marijuana, decreases in use among students are a more recent development. In all three grades, the percentage who used marijuana in the past 12 months hovered within a tight window of just a few percentage points in the 20 years from 2000 to 2020. In 2021, the first year surveyed after the pandemic onset, substantial declines in marijuana use took place in all three grades. In 12th and 10th grades, these declines have since continued, and past 12-month use levels in 2024 were the lowest in the past three decades, at 26% and 16%, respectively. In eighth grade, the percentage in 2024 was 7%, the same for the past four years after dropping from a pre-pandemic level of 11% in 2020.  For nicotine vaping, the 2024 declines continue a 180-degree turn centered around the pandemic onset. Before the pandemic, use levels surged from 2017 to 2019 and then held steady in 2020 (before the pandemic onset). Large declines took place during the pandemic, and these declines have since continued to the point where the 2024 levels for the past 12 months of nicotine vaping are close to where they started in 2017, the first year that questions on nicotine vaping were included on the survey. Specifically, past 12-month use was 21% in 12th grade (compared to 35% in 2020 and 19% in 2017), 15% in 10th grade (compared to 31% in 2020 and 16% in 2017) and 10% in eighth grade (compared to 17% in 2020 and 10% in 2017). The continued declines in adolescent drug use since the pandemic raise important policy and research questions. They suggest that a delay in drug use initiation during adolescence could potentially lower substance use trajectories over a lifetime, Miech says.

Such a delay, he says, may prevent youth from associating with drug-using peer groups that encourage continued use and may forestall biological processes that contribute to the development of addiction.

The Monitoring the Future study is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health. It is conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan. 

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