Drugs, alcohol... Adolescent consumption has fallen sharply over the last ten years in France

The decline observed between 2015 and 2024 is "significant" in many European countries and "particularly marked in France," the OFDT emphasizes. More than 113,000 young Europeans aged 16 were surveyed, including 3,376 French people, for this latest edition.

In 2024, 20% of 16-year-old French people had already experimented with tobacco, which is "one of the lowest levels in Europe," reports the OFDT: "In ten years, the proportion of 16-year-old adolescents smoking cigarettes every day has been divided by five," falling from 16% in 2015 to 3.1% in 2024, reaching the levels of the Nordic countries. This "sharp decline," observed in "almost all" Western European countries, reflects effective control policies, notably the increase in tobacco prices, analyzes the OFDT.

Cannabis experimentation by French adolescents is also experiencing a "spectacular" decline: it has been divided by three in ten years, while young French people were among the biggest consumers in Europe in 2015. Around 8.4% of 16-year-olds had already used it in 2024, compared to 31% in 2015. To explain this decline, the OFDT points to the progressive "denormalization" of smoking "which, given the intertwining of the two products, probably also favors a denormalization of cannabis among the younger generations."

Seven out of 10 French adolescents had tried alcohol by 2024, a level that remains "high," even though "France is among the third of European countries with the lowest consumption of alcoholic beverages," the study also indicates. The frequency of "heavy occasional drinking" also remains high, both in France (22%) and in half of the countries participating in the study (30%).