Decline in teen drug use continues, surprising experts

Presumably it's related to increased conservatism in gen Z males: https://www.axios.com/2024/09/28/gen-z-men-conservative-poll . Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug use.

That poll is really confusing. There are multiple types of conservatism—one is very media-driven (e.g. "omg they did a gender wokeness in my game") and then there's the global variety (liking traditional values). The poll presumes these are the same social phenomena when they're very obviously not. It doesn't help that the way our political parties (which is what the poll seems to be based on) differentiate themselves map extremely poorly onto how americans differentiate themselves.

edit: political -> media-driven

Nope, women are getting less conservative and this applies to them too.

> Conservatives generally have more negative attitudes to drug use

That is categorically false.

I think it would be interesting to look at whether the rate of physical / sexual abuse has changed, since that's significantly correlated with use of hard drugs.

Not really. Don't conflate octogenarian-guided party and community policy with what people actually do.

Do they actually have lower rates of drug use, though? They also have more negative views of homosexuality, but their gatherings can still make Grindr crash.

Attitudes are not the same thing as behaviors. Source: I’m from a really red state with a higher rate of overdose deaths than California