Use Of Licit And Illicit Drugs In Teenagers: An Alarming Situation, Which Requires Early Prevention

The consumption of licit and illicit drugs is responsible for an annual loss of 130,000 lives in France, to which a considerable health and social cost has to be added. The direct cost for the public finances amounts to 22.1 billion euros close to 1% of the GDP. The high prevalence use of such substances among adults is explained by a very early exposure and a steady progression as shown by the results of three prevalence surveys among teenagers from 11 to 17 years old conducted between 2010 and 2017. These consumptions are therefore a major public health problem that requires urgent attention. Considering recent use among 35 countries in the past 30 days, 16-year-olds in France are in first place for cannabis, at the third place for drugs of abuse other than cannabis, at the 11th place for tobacco and at the 15th place for alcohol. Adolescence is a particularly vulnerable period for addiction due to the lack of neuropsychological maturity. Many factors may also facilitate the transition to addiction, including genetic and environmental factors as well as psychiatric vulnerability or personality traits. Generally, drug abuse among teenagers is likely to induce a series of disorders. To be really effective, information and actions to prevent addictive behavior have to be initiated early, or even from nursery school, then throughout all the educational process. Other interventions pointing skills development in children, and/or parents, strategies with multiple skills or regulatory decisions have also shown their efficiency. The National Academy of Medicine proposes a number of recommendations to protect teenager's health from addiction. (C) 2019 l'Academie nationale de medecine. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.