Drug use during the « lycée years » - Results of the 2015 ESPAD survey in France

Tendances n° 112, OFDT, 4 p.
September 2016

Since 1999, the quadrennial ESPAD survey conducted among 16-year-old teenagers attending school in the majority of European countries has included French students and enables comparison of psychoactive substance use, primarily alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. Since 2011 in France, the survey has been extended to all teenagers attending lycée, i.e. the last three years of secondary education, thus providing an opportunity to observe the diffusion of psychoactive substance use among teenagers through school. In 2015, 6,642 lycée students were therefore interviewed in France.

The initial results for mainland France generally provide appreciable insights into tobacco and alcohol use among lycée students since 2011, with daily tobacco use falling by more than 24% and a reduction of more than 30% in regular alcohol use. However, no changes were observed in regular cannabis use (7.7%) between 2011 and 2015, despite a slight reduction in lifetime use (at least one instance of use). Differences, sometimes striking, in use are observed between the main types of school (whether vocational or general), with smokers observed more frequently among students in the vocational sector (33.4% vs. 23.2% on average). Lastly, as an extension to the ESCAPAD and HBSC surveys in 2014, this analysis also provided an opportunity to determine shisha and e-cigarette use among teenagers.

Authors : Stanislas Spilka, Olivier Le Nézet, Carine Mutatayi, Éric Janssen

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