Teenagers in France are still consuming fewer psychoactive substances, according to a study published Wednesday, with the exception of alcohol, the consumption of which is increasing after a marked decline during Covid-19.
Most levels of substance use are down in 2024 compared to 2022, according to the latest edition of the national EnCLASS survey, conducted by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Trends (OFDT) and in which nearly 12,000 middle and high school students participated.
In 2024, less than one in ten middle school students (7.7%) reported having experimented with tobacco – compared to 11.4% two years earlier, while among high school students, this proportion decreased by 3.4 points, to 30.6%.
"In nearly fifteen years," the report's authors note, "experimenting with tobacco has been divided by four among middle school students and by two among high school students, while daily smoking among the latter has been divided by five."
On the other hand, the spread of electronic cigarettes "remains significant": nearly one in five middle school students (19%) and more than one in four high school students (25,3%) have already tried this type of cigarette.
Among high school students, daily use of electronic cigarettes (6.8 %) now exceeds that of tobacco (5.6 %).
Like tobacco, cannabis experimentation has also decreased among adolescents – falling from 22.5 % to 16.1 % in two years – similar to other illicit substances whose experimental use "has been divided by two and a half between 2011 and 2024", according to the OFDT.
Smoking cigarettes and cannabis is "more often perceived as dangerous to health, including when consumed occasionally," the office says.
As for alcohol experimentation, after a continuous decline between 2010 and 2022 – and more particularly between 2018 and 2022 because of the Covid-19 pandemic which "disrupted adolescent social interactions", the report notes – it started to rise again between 2022 and 2024.
Half of middle school students and seven out of ten high school students report having already experimented with alcohol, compared to more than seven out of ten middle school students and nine out of ten high school students in the early 2010s.
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