This article is the first in a four-part series diving into the results of the Communities That Care Coalition’s 2024 Student Health Survey. The Communities That Care Coalition is co-hosted by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG) and Community Action Pioneer Valley.

Results from a 2024 survey show that middle and high school students in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region are smoking, vaping, and using drugs and alcohol significantly less in 2024 than they have for the last 10 years.

Since 2003, the Communities That Care Coalition has surveyed more than 40,000 students from all nine public school districts in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region to evaluate youth habits and overall emotional and physical health.

Within a 30-day window preceding the 2014 survey, roughly 11% of students smoked cigarettes, 9% used prescription drugs without a prescription, 15% reported binge drinking, 24% reported using marijuana and 35% reported drinking. This year, the number of students in grades eight, 10 and 12 who reported using marijuana or drinking 30 days prior to taking the survey dropped to roughly 16% for both vices, while binge drinking rates dwindled to 7%, prescription drug use dropped to 3% and rates of cigarette smoking dropped to 4%.

Although the survey only began asking young people about vaping in 2016, when 18% of students surveyed reported having used electronic cigarettes within 30 days of the survey, vaping rates, now at 15%, have dropped slightly since 2016 and significantly from a peak in 2019 when roughly 32% of students reported vaping.

While the use of popular recreational substances such as cannabis, alcohol and tobacco has subsided in recent years, Communities That Care Coalition Coordinator Kat Allen said the region’s teens see the substances as being less “risky” than they did in years past, with perception of the risks associated with cannabis use having shifted the most drastically.

“We have big money involved in the cannabis business too now,” Allen said. “Regardless of the politics of legalization and some of the benefits that came from decriminalization and medicinal use, suddenly we have advertising, and the conversation changed quite a bit around cannabis.”

Allen also noted that since marijuana was made legal for adult recreational use in 2016, use rates among teens have dropped, but perception of the drug’s harm among teens has decreased significantly since marijuana hit the legal market. In 2016, roughly 52% of the teens felt cannabis use caused a “moderate” or “great” risk of harm. This year, only 41% of students consider the substance to be risky.

“A lot of young people see cannabis as sort of like the cure-all drug. We just need to keep remembering to send the message to our young people that it’s different when your brain is developing than when you’re an adult,” Allen said. “It’s a different thing for an adult to casually or recreationally use marijuana periodically than for a teenager to use cannabis.”

Despite the rate of teens smoking cigarettes decreasing from 19% to 4% between 2003 and 2024, students’ perception of the risks associated with smoking dropped from 92% to 77% of teens believing the practice was greatly or moderately harmful within the same time period.

Communities That Care Coalition Evaluation Coordinator Nick Hathaway speculated that the disparity between a decreasing student smoker population and an increase in positive perceptions on smoking might be due to changes in the approach to youth health education.

“There were a lot of anti-smoking ads back then,” Hathaway said. “As smoking dropped off, a lot of the education dropped off, too.”

Allen also added that teens’ perceptions of substances and likelihood of using common substances are often influenced by their family members’ and peers’ perceptions of a particular substance.

“Sixteen percent of Franklin County and North Quabbin students reported use of cannabis in the past 30 days. ... If we break that down and we look at it by kids whose parents think it’s OK and kids whose friends think it’s OK to use cannabis, 48% of those whose parents and friends think it’s OK to use use,” Allen explained. “If kids think that their parents and their friends both think it’s wrong, 2% of those kids use, so the messages that parents give around these substances is really important.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.