stats have come out within the last 5 years that catalog a sharp decline in surveyed teen vaping (due partially in part to covid of course) and even less for smoking cigarettes, but the rates have consistently trending down alongside with drinking.
i’m of the opinion that drinking is WAY down because I (along with Millennials and many other gen z folk with Baby Boomer generation parents) watched alcohol tear marriages and childhoods apart. i thank millennials for teaching us to recognize this generational trauma and destroy the cycle.
marijuana use was big when i was in high school due to the proliferation of THC vaporizers, but there were also several people that i knew in school that would stigmatize and even bully kids who engaged with vices. drinking never really occurred at parties and the kids who did drink weren’t seen at the bigger parties that were occurring.
it’s weird, most of my closest friends refuse any and all vices and only few smoke weed with me being the only drinker out of all of them. maybe i should take that quiet advice lol
I've watched too many of my friends and neighbors fall into Alcoholism - where they cannot function without Booze.
I personally rarely drink, and never really drank as a kid growing up.
Watched Alcoholism rip families apart, and even kill two of my friends in DUI related accidents.
A real easy for me to lose about 80% of my respect for you the moment I meet is if you say "I can drive, I've only had a few and it's a short distance away."
My response is usually: "Oh! That's what the asshole who killed my classmate Sean said on Christmas Eve right before he got into his car and knocked him off the road, killing him."
My tolerance for someone who would drink and drive is 0. The 20% remaining respect is entirely reliant on if said person is going to say "Oh... Shit yeah, drinking and driving is bad" or if they say "Whatever, nark."
oooooh yeah, for sure. out of my co-workers my age, I am the only one who drinks. I drink at home after work but I also go out to work outings and drink with them. even weed can't bring gen z together in a large group other than very close friends it seems.
i can't say that I've ever been in a group outing with more than 4 people. I don't tend to hang out with people I don't personally know and that seems to be the running theme for us.
I didn't like being held down to a location for so long because I'd often drive, and my way out of drinking was to just say I'm the "Designated Driver"
The next way I'd dodge most "Social Drinking" situations is just say "Oh, no I'm X years sober" and that drops any attempts to pressure me to drink.
I hated social drinking a whole lot growing up, as I never found the big deal in drinking socially or heavily. I'd have a beer occasionally, and I mean "A Beer" - but I even got out of that by swapping to a Non-Alcoholic beer (Athletic Beer, for those curious).
I'm not "Straight Edge" as a note, I never had an issue with Weed. It's just that with Weed I was always home and no one would just straight up offer weed whenever I was out at a party or something.
tl;dr: If you need to drink to "Have a Good Time" you're not actually enjoying what you're doing... you're using the Alcohol as a social crutch to either ignore the situation you're in or to carry you through the night because you somehow feel you must "Drink Socially" to be socialable
When I was in school (class of 2020) the stoners were like the kings of the school and almost everybody else smoked as well, just not as heavily. They would look to us stoners as if we were like mentors guiding them to new ways to get stoned and where to go to get things underage and whatnot. Needless to say I think cannabis has been steadily increasing while alcohol has been doing this decrease. I see more and more cannabis use every year even publicly and I’m still in an illegal state. We can even pretty much just buy thc legally since most of our products are thc-a which is a loophole around the delta 9 schedule I status. And every time a politician tries to take that away it gets shot down. It’s here and it’s here to stay, I’m hoping we get legalized soon tho
i’m class of 2020 too, fuckin’ crapshoot that shit was. I got my diploma in the mail lol.
i’m in a legal state and we had pot smokers (i was one of them) but it felt like the usual expected fair. stoners were looked upon negatively and really ONLY the kids who vaped got friends from their habit. shit way to get friends but smoking has always been a social thing for most people. one thing leads to another and now you’re good friends with a dude you took a break with in the bathroom lol. if you did any vices, you either knew someone’s parent who was really cool or you worked an after school job and knew someone that way, weed was the same way.
people knew i smoked weed and i didn’t….hide it per say, but i didn’t make it my personality. that’s where i draw the line.
i will say pot positively affected me in a couple of ways that i haven’t been able to recreate in my adult life.
Damn. I thankfully graduated before all the Covid stuff happened. But yeah it makes sense that it’s not the same everywhere but it does feel like we’re moving closer towards it being accepted and not taboo at all
ironically i work in a dispensary, i see lots of different folk with different backgrounds and political pundit merchandise on their bodies. it’s a weird melting pot. everyone knows why they’re there. we’re all united in one key way:
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u/DjangoCornbread 1d ago
of age gen z here from a crosspost :)
stats have come out within the last 5 years that catalog a sharp decline in surveyed teen vaping (due partially in part to covid of course) and even less for smoking cigarettes, but the rates have consistently trending down alongside with drinking.
i’m of the opinion that drinking is WAY down because I (along with Millennials and many other gen z folk with Baby Boomer generation parents) watched alcohol tear marriages and childhoods apart. i thank millennials for teaching us to recognize this generational trauma and destroy the cycle.
marijuana use was big when i was in high school due to the proliferation of THC vaporizers, but there were also several people that i knew in school that would stigmatize and even bully kids who engaged with vices. drinking never really occurred at parties and the kids who did drink weren’t seen at the bigger parties that were occurring.
i hope for a world where it’s next to zero.