NEVER BEEN HIGHER

Young Americans Are Using Cannabis and Hallucinogens at Record Rate

Only Molly is on a comedown, researchers say.

The current crop of American youngsters are officially the highest ever as researchers found they’re using more weed and hallucinogenic drugs than any other generation since recordkeeping began. A survey of people age 19 to 30 run by the National Institutes of Health found the record high in data collected between April and October 2021. The number of young adults saying they’d had cannabis in the last year (43 percent), past month (29 percent), or daily (11 percent) has never been higher since the survey started in 1988. Meanwhile, 8 percent of people asked had used a hallucinogen in the past year. Spikes were recorded in the use of LSD, mescaline, peyote, magic mushrooms, and PCP. Only MDMA—aka Molly or ecstasy or disco biscuits—saw a drop, from 5 percent in 2020 to 3 percent in 2021.