Consumption of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis drops among young French adolescents aged 11 to 15 but remains above the European average, according to a note from the French Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT) released on Tuesday .
In 2018, 70% of 15-year-old French adolescents said they had already drunk alcohol, compared to 79.2% in 2014, points out the OFDT, whose analysis is based on the results of a survey by the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted every four years with 227,000 students from 44 countries or regions in Europe and Canada. A third of middle school students said they had tasted it before entering sixth grade (compared to 49.8% in 2014), the highest level of experimentation in Europe at this age, all sexes combined.
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If boys are earlier consumers than girls up to the age of 13, the gap then narrows in almost all of Europe, with the exception of Armenia, Moldova and Albania.
The experience of drunkenness - at least two in the course of life -, more generally present in boys than girls, also fell from 17.1 to 12.9% among young French people aged 15, placing them in the last quarter of the ranking, dominated by Denmark.
Cigarettes are also much less popular with only a third of French adolescents having ever tried them at the end of college in 2018, compared to more than half in 2014. The level of experimentation of young people aged 11 and 13 , significantly lower, is also down with 4.1 and 14% of first smokers, respectively.
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If it remains above the European average, the proportion of young smokers "during the month" in France leaves the first places in the ranking, occupied by Italy, Bulgaria and Lithuania.
Experimentation with cannabis among 15-year-old adolescents, which has been increasing continuously in France since 2006, fell by 12 points in 2018 with 16.5% of boys and girls who pulled on their first joint. Consumption "during the month" (8.5%) follows the same curve, with a drop of six points.
France thus leaves the top ranks in the ranking but remains in the first third of the countries most consuming among adolescents. Behind the young Bulgarians, who are the most addicted to cannabis, the highest prevalence is observed in countries or regions of Western Europe such as England, Switzerland, Italy, Germany or Wales.
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