Ontario students’ use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis products continues to fall.
Long-term trends, released on Wednesday by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in their biennial Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, show combined alcohol and tobacco use rates in grades 7, 9 and 11 at 38-year lows, since the data first started being collected in 1977.
Cannabis use, which bottomed out in 1991 at 9.9 per cent, fell slightly from the numbers reported two years ago, dropping from 18.5 per cent to 1 6.7 per cent.
Alcohol use edged downward from 41.9 per cent in 2013 to 38.9 per cent in 2015, a far cry from the 73.7 per cent of students in grades 7, 9 and 11 in 1979 who reported drinking in the past 12 months.
Tobacco use is also plummeting, with just six per cent of students in those same three grades saying they had smoked in the past year. It was 6.3 per cent in 2013. In 1979 the number was 35 per cent.
The survey questioned 10,426 students across the province.
Overall, 46 per cent of students in grades 7-12 reported drinking in the past year, while nine per cent admitted smoking tobacco and 21 per cent said they smoked pot.
Researchers said while they’re happy to see the numbers falling in all three categories, the alcohol figures is still troublesome.
“Rates of student drinking have declined over the long term, but are still very high and have recently leveled off,” said Robert Mann, a senior scientist at CAMH said in a release issued on Wednesday.
“Binge drinking is dangerous and we are concerned to see nearly 20 per cent of high-school students reporting blacking out on at least one occasion in the last year.”
Students were also asked this year for the first time if their parents allowed them to drink at home.
Twenty-seven per cent responded yes.
“We were surprised by this number,” Mann said. “It suggests some parents might think it’s safer to supervise kids while they drink. In fact, other research shows that students who are allowed to drink at home are more likely to drink excessively.”
The study shows males and females are equally likely to spark up a joint.
And use increases with age.
About 37.2 per cent of Grade 12 students in Ontario said they used cannabis in the past 12 months, more than triple the 10.3 per cent rate for Grade 9 students.
About 15 per cent of Grade 12 students confessed to smoking in the past year, while only 3.8 per cent of Grade 9 students had tried cigarettes.
Seventy-two per cent of Grade 12 students had used alcohol in the past year, more than double the 33.8 of Grade 9 students who said they had drank.
The study also shows about five per cent of students have used electronic cigarettes to inhale cannabis products in the past year.
“Vaping seems to be emerging as an alternative way to consume cannabis,” said Hayley Hamilton, a co-lead investigator of the study.
“It’s important for us to try to get a sense of how these devices are being used by young people before the behaviour becomes widespread.”
E-cigarette use surpassed regular cigarettes, with 12 per cent reporting they’d taken more than a few puffs from an electronic cigarette device.
