Drug Use Under Covid Is Approaching Historic High, Alcohol Consumption Is Falling for College Students

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BY JEAN-GABRIEL FERNANDEZ

Marijuana use among young adults “ (ages 19-30) increased to alltime highs in 2020, which was true for annual use, 30-day use and daily use,” according to the federal government’s Monitoring the Future annual study. Among young adults, 42% used marijuana in the past year, 27% used it in the past month, and nearly 10% reported consuming marijuana daily throughout 2020. The 21-26-year-old cohort, largely comprised of college students, uses marijuana at higher-than-average rates. Monitoring the Future has been chronicling substance use across the nation for nearly 50 years. The newest edition, published in September 2021, contains data gathered in the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, from March to November 2020. While the study is usually a hallmark of slow and steady cultural shifts, the newest edition addresses the effects of a worldwide pandemic on the demand for mind-altering substances. Indeed, the study notes a significant dampening effect on alcohol consumption among young adults. Although alcohol use is usually steady from year to year, researchers found an uncharacteristic drop in 2020. People were significantly less likely to drink any alcohol at all, and they were even less likely to have experienced being drunk. The number of young adults reporting having been drunk in the past month fell five percentage points, to 31% of surveyed individuals. Researchers point to “a possible pandemic effect in terms of reduced social time.”

BINGE DRINKING DROPS

“We clearly see that young people use alcohol as something to be taken at parties and gatherings. With the pandemic, those weren’t happening, so the alcohol intake and binge drinking dropped,” explained Dr. John Schulenberg, lead researcher of the study, in an interview for The Washington Post. The impact of the pandemic on alcohol intake is particularly marked among college students, he notes. “Historically, college students have reported the highest levels of binge drinking compared to same-aged youth who are not enrolled in college. This is the first year where binge drinking was similar between the two groups. While binge drinking has been gradually declining among college students for the past few decades, this is a new historic low, which may reflect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of reduced time with college friends.”

Among college students specifically, alcohol consumption fell from 62% in 2019 to 56% in 2020, while binge drinking went from 32% in 2019 to 24% in 2020. Among college students, marijuana use in the past year was higher than for other groups at 44%, up from 38% of college students in 2015. Additionally, 8% of college students report consuming marijuana daily, up from 5% five years prior.

“The pandemic seems to have actually made marijuana into an alternative to escape the monotony of isolation. It’s made

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life become more boring, more stressful. So, if drugs let you experience that completely different mental state, I wonder whether that would be a factor that leads people to use them,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

MORE MARIJUANA USE

The reduction in social activities, the increase in isolation and pandemic anxiety did not just impact alcohol and marijuana intake rates, although those are most prominent due to the sheer popularity of both drugs. Another effect has been to nearly double the reported use of hallucinogenic substances such as LSD, MDMA and magic mushrooms among college students.

The prevalence of college students using any illicit drug increased from a recent low of 34% in 2006 to 47%, primarily due to the exponential popularity and legalization of marijuana. Interestingly, it is not the highest rate recorded by the Monitoring the Future series: In 1980, 56.2% of college students reported using illicit drugs, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2020. Marijuana use was as high as 51%, as opposed to “only” 44% today. Cocaine use was significantly higher in 1980, too.

Between 1980 and 1991, annual drug use fell consistently year after year; then, it stagnated around 35% during the 1990s and early 2000s; ultimately, it has been going back up in the past two decades. The year 2020 has catapulted substance use to levels not seen since the early 1980s, and it seems likely that the pandemic effects observed in the first year of Covid will ripple through 2021 as well. Next year’s Monitoring the Future study will cast a light on the full consequences that years of quarantine can have on the human psyche and the need for artificial paradises.

Jean-Gabriel Fernandez is a journalist and Sorbonne graduate living in Milwaukee