Alcohol consumption among teenagers is declining, but at a slower rate among girls

Use of alcohol and alcohol in combination with cannabis among teenagers is declining, but use among girls is declining more slowly than among boys, according to a study published in Alcoholism: Clinical and experimental research. In addition, rates of cannabis use among non-alcoholic teens, which have more than doubled in the past decade, are increasing faster among female college students than their male counterparts.

Despite the decline in alcohol use, alcohol use among teenagers remains high and far more common than cannabis use. The concomitant use of cannabis and alcohol increases the health risks for adolescents, including the risk of poisoning, injury, disability and other short- and long-term consequences for adolescents. With one in five college students reporting the use of both substances at the same time, continued public health efforts to reduce teenage alcohol and cannabis use and interventions specifically targeting female college students are important.

To understand trends in teenage alcohol and cannabis use, both individually and in combination, the study authors examined data from Monitoring the Future surveys from 2000 to 2020. The surveys are conducted annually among 38,000 twelfth grade students in a random sample of 400 conducted public and private high schools. Students completed questionnaires containing questions about demographic information and alcohol and cannabis use over the past year.

From 2000 to 2020, the number of students who reported having used alcohol and cannabis at least once at the same time in the past year decreased from 24% to 19%. Over the same period, the number of students who had consumed alcohol in the past year only decreased from 38% to 28%. In contrast, from 2011 to 2019, the number of students using cannabis alone more than doubled, from 2% to 5%, and use of both substances separately increased slightly, from 11% to 12%. Female students were less likely than male students to use cannabis and alcohol at the same time, but were more likely to use only alcohol, and more likely to use both alcohol and cannabis, but not simultaneously. The decrease in alcohol use – alone or with cannabis – was faster in male students than in female students, while pure cannabis use increased faster in females than in males. The pace of increase in cannabis use may also be accelerating among non-white students, who had lower rates of alcohol use and concomitant use of cannabis and alcohol, but higher rates of pure cannabis use, compared to white students.

The study’s authors recommend continuing to pay attention to reducing alcohol and cannabis use among adolescents and developing strategies to understand and effectively address issues that contribute to alcohol and cannabis use among female students and other vulnerable populations.

Although not part of this study, an intervention to slow the increase in concomitant alcohol and cannabis use among young adults who may have less access to public health interventions after high school or college is warranted. The study also did not include teens who had dropped out of school, and demographic categories were limited to race (white, black, and other) and sex (gender assigned at birth). All data for the study were collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic; Therefore, the impact of the pandemic on trends in adolescent drug use is not described by this study.