Days when young ravers would try to smuggle drinks or have one with fake IDs is gone.
According to an article published on iflscience.com, young people appear to be turning their back on alcohol and cigarettes for their first dabble with drugs, according to a new study looking at the ever-shifting culture of drug use. In fact, there’s a huge rise in kids abstaining from drugs altogether, but which are currently in trend? MDMA is far gone…
New research, published in the journal Prevention Science, by the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has shown that more young people are using marijuana as their first drug of choice.
Between 2004 and 2014, 275,500 nationally-representative individuals were quizzed about their drug use and when they first tried different substances. In 2004, they found that 21 percent of young people’s first experience with drugs was smoking cigarettes. Ten years on, that figure was low as 9 percent. Alternatively, at least 8 percent of participants reported in 2014 that marijuana was the first drug they ever used, almost double the number (4.8 percent) in 2004.
“To the degree these trends continue and greater numbers of youth start with marijuana as their first drug, there may be an increasing need for public interventions and treatment services for marijuana-related problems,” added the scientist who run a study, Fairman.
In terms of “harder” illicit drugs, many commentators have noted that millennials and “Generation Z” are far less interested in intoxicants of all varieties. One study found that substance use disorders for those aged 12-17 declined between 2003 and 2014 by an astonishing 49 percent.
