Only one in 12 days, the “courtesy” drinks: the registration of the vacation in Malta with Friends of Martin, 18, for the end of the high school, seems representative of the increasingly more French consumption. Without drugs or tobacco, and almost without alcohol.
Only 20% of the 16 -year -old French declared in 2024 already consumed tobacco and 8.4% of cannabis, according to a European study on the consumption of young people, transmitted in early September by the French Drug Observatory and Drug Addiction (OFDT). Compared to 2015, there are five times less daily smokers and three times less young people who have experienced cannabis, the study points out.
If Martin has never touched a cigarette, he has already “tested” alcohol and cannabis, at the end of the university. “The first time consumes is under social pressure or to make the big one,” said the student has just entered the first year of law in Paris.
A conscience
From high school, however, advocates sobriety, with the reasons for his Christian faith, his sports practice or simply his ability to have fun with his friends without resorting to a psychoactive substance.
This seems to go in the direction of a general tendency, that of “a conscience in society (…) of the harmful effects of these behaviors”, Judges Nicolas Prisse, president of the interministerial mission to combat drugs and addictive behaviors.
A vast survey conducted in 2022 by OFDT in 23,000 17 years, the French of the year have already indicated a downward trend in their consumption of psychoactive substances, which demonstrates according to the public health doctor that “the battle for denormalization” is in the process of winning.
Expensive site cigarettes
In the foreground, tobacco: Charlotte, 16, drinks occasionally at night or in a box, but it is not about “falling” in “nicotine dependence”.
His mother, a smoker, has prohibited him. “He fell very young and is now really an addiction,” deplores the high school student in the Toulouse suburbs, emphasizing that “it costs super expensive.”
And, in fact, the constant increase in the price, the neutral package, the prohibition of sales to minors, constitutes an “arsenal regulation” that can explain that tobacco consumption “is no longer popular among young people”, which causes cannabis, another “product to smoke,” according to Nicolas Prisse.
Another explanation of this evolution could be the “degradation of mental health” observed in young people, which leads to a “withdrawal”, at the age in which consumption is linked to “social compliance with the group”, according to the doctor.
Among Ruben’s friends, 17, for example, we are not very little outside. This student of Toulouse High School has never tried tobacco, cannabis, electronic cigarette, for which “it is not so curious.” On the other hand, alcohol “later” is consumed, when he will have “more opportunities to drink it.”
Because alcohol is still central to the socialization of adolescents. Seven out of ten had already tried it in 2024, according to the European study transmitted by the OFDT, with a significant frequency of “significant point alcoholizations” (excessive alcohol consumption), at least five glasses of alcohol on the same time.
“To be drunk, it scares me a little, because I have friends who have already been very good, to the point of having to call the hospital,” says Clara (first modified name), 15.
On the nights of this student of the second school in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne), “there are alcohol” and some young people of their age “do not really know their limits.” Therefore, not everything has earned and “you have to remain cautious,” said Nicolas Prisse.
“The industrialists or, sometimes, criminal groups, when it comes to drugs and prohibited products, are very inventive in terms of trends and offers in the market,” he adds.
The “puffs”, disposable electronic cigarettes, are a good example. Forbidden for sale since February in France but they continue to sell in particular in small grocery stores, they are still a very real trend among adolescents, as evidenced by young people interviewed by AFP.
“It’s in the fruit, it smells good,” unlike cigarettes, Clara explains. “It does not seem very dangerous,” said the high school student, who is aware of his doubt.
Source: BFM TV
