Teen drug use continues downward trend in U.S., survey says

America’s teenagers continue to say no to drugs.

That’s according to results from an annual survey released Tuesday on teen use of alcohol, tobacco, illicit substances and prescription medications. The survey was conducted by the National Institutes of Health.

Findings indicated that use of any illicit drug by eighth-graders in the past year was the lowest in the survey’s 25-year history of measuring the group. Past year use of illicit drugs other than marijuana was found to be down for all three grades – eighth, 10th and 12th – surveyed.

Overall, more than 45,000 students from 372 public and private schools participated in the 2016 survey. Since 1975, the survey has measured drug and alcohol use by high school seniors with eighth-graders and sophomores added to the survey in 1991.

“The declining use of many drugs by youth is certainly encouraging and important,” said Lloyd Johnston, a researcher from the University of Michigan, in a statement. “But we need to remember that future cohorts of young people entering adolescence also will need to know why using drugs is not a smart choice.”

A total of 5.4 percent of eighth-graders surveyed said they had used marijuana in the past year, a decline of 1.1 percent from 2015. However, among high school seniors, 22.5 percent of respondants reported past-month marijuana use, a number that was about the same as last year.

The survey did show that there continues to be a higher rate of pot use among 12th-graders in states with medical marijuana laws when compared with states that don’t have such laws.

Today’s teens are also much more likely to use marijuana and smoke e-cigarettes than regular tobacco cigarettes. In 1991, when the survey first measured cigarette smoking, 10.7 percent of high school seniors smoked a half-pack or more per day.

This year, the survey showed that just 1.8 percent of seniors smoked that many traditional cigarettes per day.

About 71 percent of high school sophomores reported that they think it is “easy” to get alcohol, though that number is down significantly from a peak of around 90 percent two decades ago.

More than half – about 56 percent – of 12th graders reported having used alcohol in the past year, though that number was 75 percent in 1997. Overall, teen use of synthetic cannabinoids, cocaine, inhalants and opioids are all down, according to the survey.

This story was originally published December 13, 2016 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Teen drug use continues downward trend in U.S., survey says."