According to the latest Monitoring the Future results for 2018, it was mostly good news. The use of most substances is down or unchanged compared with 2017 among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, including alcohol and combustible tobacco which are currently at record lows. The opioid epidemic still does not seem to be engulfing teens the way it has for their elders--opioids are also down among teens. And most notably, cannabis use did NOT increase in spite of increasingly widespread legalization, decriminalization, and medicalization in more and more states--and paired with the recent sharp decline in teen drinking, one could even argue that cannabis may be displacing alcohol a bit.
The bad news? The second wave of the teen vaping surge from late 2017 through 2018 (after dropping from its previous peak in 2015 to a lower level in 2017) does in fact seem to be real. And there was no similar increase in adult vaping at that time, in contrast to previous years. But for that, we can thank the mainstream media and the FDA for fanning the flames of moral panic over teen vaping, which was probably the best (and free!) advertising that JUUL could ever possibly dream of. And, of course, JUUL's unusually high nicotine content as well. And, we repeat, teen smoking has continued to drop to a new record low. As for the increase in vaping cannabis, that does not seem to have led to an overall increase in cannabis use, but rather a displacement of smoking weed to vaping it instead, much like was the case with tobacco from 2011-2017.
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