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Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

Kids who were in 8th grade at pandemic’s start have ushered in an era of abstaining.

Teen drug use continued to fall in 2024, extending a dramatic decline spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic that experts expected would reverse now that the acute phase of the global crisis is well over. "Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted," Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "Kids who were in eighth grade at the start of the pandemic will be graduating from high school this year, and this unique cohort has ushered in the lowest rates of substance use we’ve seen in decades," Miech noted.

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