The consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis among 16-year-old teenagers has fallen sharply across Europe over the past ten years, including among young people in France, according to the French Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT), which presented the results of a European survey conducted in 2024.

The decline observed between 2015 and 2024 is described as “significant” in many European countries and “particularly pronounced in France,” OFDT emphasized.

For the latest edition of the study, more than 113,000 European 16-year-olds were surveyed, including 3,376 from France, AFP reported.

According to the European Survey on Substance Use, which is conducted every four years in 37 countries, France is now “below the European average on all indicators” measuring the use of addictive substances among 16-year-olds.

In 2024, only 20% of 16-year-olds in France had tried tobacco, one of the lowest rates in Europe, OFDT noted. “In ten years, the proportion of 16-year-old daily smokers has decreased fivefold, from 16% in 2015 to 3.1% in 2024, reaching levels similar to those in Scandinavian countries,” the agency reported.

This “sharp decrease,” observed in “almost all Western European countries,” reflects the impact of effective anti-smoking policies, particularly tobacco price increases, OFDT analysts explained.

Experiments with cannabis among French teenagers also saw a “spectacular decline,” dropping threefold in a decade. In 2015, young French people were among the highest consumers in Europe; by 2024, only 8.4% of 16-year-olds reported using cannabis, compared to 31% in 2015.

To explain this decrease, OFDT points to the gradual “denormalization” of smoking, which, given the interconnected nature of tobacco and cannabis use, likely also contributed to a decline in cannabis experimentation among younger generations.

Meanwhile, seven out of ten French teenagers reported trying alcohol in 2024, a figure that remains relatively high. However, France is now among the one-third of European countries with the lowest levels of alcohol consumption, the survey highlighted.

The rate of “significant episodic alcohol use (API)” also remains high — 22% in France and 30% on average across half of the participating countries.

Other illegal drugs have become far less attractive to teenagers as well: in 2024, only 3.9% of French teens reported trying them, compared to 7.5% in 2015, placing France below the European average of 5%. | BGNES