SAFE GC Coalition: 2024 Survey of Youth Alcohol and Other Drug Use

Monitoring The Future (MTF) is an ongoing study of the behaviors, attitudes, and values of Americans from adolescence through adulthood. Each year, more than 25,000 8th, 10th and 12th grade students are surveyed as part of the MTF Main study (12th graders from 1975, and 8th and 10th graders since 1991) and approximately 20,000 adults ages 19 to 65 are surveyed as part of the MTF Panel study. The MTF study conducts annual follow up surveys with a subsample of each graduating class, who complete a follow up every two years from ages 19–30 and every five years from age 35 onward and has been funded under the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a part of the National Institutes of Health.

2024 Highlights:

• Missing rebound: Youth drug use defies expectations, continues historic decline. Adolescent drug use continued to drop in 2024, building on and extending the historically large decreases that occurred during the pandemic onset in 2020
• Boredom, relaxation and experimentation are among top reasons teens vape. Nicotine vapes are sometimes marketed as aids for cigarette smoking cessation. However, teens do not typically turn to electronic nicotine vapes to curb smoking habits, revealing a mix of curiosity, boredom and stress relief as key drivers.
• Cannabis, hallucinogen use among adults still at historic highs. The percentages of adults using cannabis and hallucinogens over the past year stayed at historically high levels
• Delta-8-THC use reported by 11% of 12th graders. The first ever national estimates of teen delta-8 use indicate that 11% of 12th grade students across the United States used it in the past year.

MTF is one of the nation’s most relied upon scientific sources of valid information on trends in use of licit and illicit psychoactive drugs by U.S. adolescents, college students, young adults, and adults up to age 60.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov.

SAFE is the only alcohol and substance use prevention agency in Glen Cove whose mission is to eliminate alcohol and substance use in Glen Cove. Its Coalition is concerned about alcohol, tobacco and other drug use in youth and is conducting a prevention awareness campaigns entitled “Keeping Glen Cove SAFE” to educate and update the community regarding alcohol, tobacco and other drug use and its negative consequences. To learn more about the SAFE Glen Cove Coalition please follow us on www.facebook.com/safeglencovecoalition or visit SAFE’s website at www.safeglencove.org.