About 1 in 4 high school seniors (26.2%) used an illicit drug in the past year, according to the 2024 Monitoring the Future survey. Among younger teens, the numbers are lower: 16.9% of 10th graders and 9% of 8th graders reported any illicit drug use in the same timeframe. These figures include marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, and the misuse of prescription medications like stimulants, sedatives, and painkillers.
Overall Drug Use by Grade Level
The Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked teen drug use since 1975, provides the most detailed snapshot of adolescent substance use in the United States. In 2024, the annual prevalence of any illicit drug use broke down as follows:
- 8th graders: 9.0%
- 10th graders: 16.9%
- 12th graders: 26.2%
The pattern is consistent year over year: drug use roughly triples between 8th and 12th grade. That said, the broader trend over the past decade is encouraging. CDC data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows sustained decreases in teen substance use from 2013 through 2023, continuing a downward shift that began well before the pandemic.
Marijuana Is the Most Common Drug
Cannabis dominates teen drug use statistics. In 2022, 30.7% of 12th graders reported using cannabis in the past year, making it far more common than any other illicit substance. About 6.3% of seniors reported daily use, meaning they used cannabis on 20 or more days in the past month.
For context, daily cannabis use among seniors is more prevalent than daily cigarette smoking in the same age group. This is a significant shift from earlier decades, when tobacco use dwarfed marijuana use among teens. Increasing availability of high-potency products like vape cartridges and edibles has changed how teens consume cannabis, though survey data on specific methods is still catching up.
Nicotine Vaping Among Teens
E-cigarettes remain the most common nicotine product among young people. In 2024, 7.8% of high school students and 3.5% of middle school students reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, totaling about 1.63 million youth. These numbers represent a significant decline from the peak years of 2019 and 2020, when teen vaping rates were roughly double current levels.
Racial and ethnic differences are notable. Among people aged 12 to 20 in 2023, White teens (15.7%) were more likely to use tobacco products or vape nicotine than Black (12.0%), Hispanic (10.2%), or Asian teens (4.8%). American Indian or Alaska Native and multiracial youth also reported higher rates of nicotine use compared with most other groups.
Alcohol Use Has Dropped Significantly
Teen drinking has fallen dramatically over the past two decades. In 2015, 42.4% of 12th graders reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days, and 24.6% reported binge drinking (five or more drinks in a row on at least one occasion). Both figures have continued declining since then, part of a long downward trend that the CDC has documented since the early 1990s.
Among underage drinkers (ages 12 to 20), White teens were more likely than Hispanic, Black, Asian, or American Indian or Alaska Native teens to report recent alcohol use or binge drinking in 2023. Alcohol remains one of the most widely used substances among teens, but today’s high schoolers drink at considerably lower rates than their parents’ generation did.
Prescription Drug Misuse
Prescription stimulants are the most commonly misused prescription drugs among teens, surpassing opioids and anti-anxiety medications. The rate of misuse varies widely from school to school, ranging from 0% to over 25% of students at a given school.
One factor that influences these numbers is how many students at a particular school take prescribed stimulants for ADHD. Schools where 12% or more of students had stimulant prescriptions tended to see misuse rates around 8% of the total student body. Schools where fewer students (0 to 6%) had prescriptions saw lower misuse rates, around 4 to 5%. This suggests that availability plays a direct role. Teens who misuse stimulants often obtain them from peers with prescriptions, using them to study, stay awake, or get high.
Racial and Ethnic Differences in Drug Use
Substance use rates vary meaningfully across racial and ethnic groups. Among people aged 12 and older in 2023, past-year illicit drug use was highest among American Indian or Alaska Native (36.7%) and multiracial individuals (36.2%), followed by Black (27.7%), White (26.1%), Hispanic (21.6%), and Asian people (12.4%). Marijuana use followed a similar pattern, with multiracial (32.9%) and American Indian or Alaska Native individuals (30.2%) reporting the highest rates.
These disparities reflect a complex mix of factors including access to substances, community stressors, historical trauma, and differences in how substance use is reported on surveys. They do not indicate that any racial or ethnic group is inherently more prone to drug use.
The Link Between Mental Health and Drug Use
Mental health struggles and substance use frequently overlap in adolescence. In 2022, 4% of all adolescents experienced both a major depressive episode and a substance use disorder in the same year. That may sound like a small number, but it represents hundreds of thousands of teens dealing with two serious conditions simultaneously.
Depression, anxiety, and trauma can all increase the likelihood that a teen turns to substances as a coping mechanism. The reverse is also true: regular drug or alcohol use during adolescence can worsen mental health symptoms and interfere with brain development that continues into the mid-20s. Teens who use substances daily or near-daily are at the highest risk for this kind of feedback loop, where each condition makes the other harder to manage.
How Teen Drug Use Has Changed Over Time
The most important thing to understand about teen drug use in the 2020s is that nearly every category is trending downward. Cigarette smoking among teens has dropped to historic lows. Alcohol use is a fraction of what it was in the 1990s. Even marijuana use, while still common, has plateaued rather than climbing. The CDC’s decade-long analysis from 2013 to 2023 confirmed sustained decreases across substance use categories.
The exceptions to this trend are worth watching. Nicotine vaping surged in the late 2010s before pulling back. And while overall overdose deaths among teens remain far less common than among adults, the contamination of counterfeit pills with fentanyl has introduced a level of unpredictability that didn’t exist a generation ago. A teen who buys what they think is a prescription painkiller or anxiety medication from a non-medical source faces real risk that the pill contains a lethal dose of a synthetic opioid. This is a different kind of danger than the statistics on overall use rates can capture.