Something good has come from the COVID pandemic

By Dennis Archambault

A surprisingly positive outcome seems to have occurred as a result of the coronavirus pandemic: Substance use by youth has remained significantly diminished, despite the return to social contact. That’s the finding of the Monitoring the Future study conducted by the University of Michigan and funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in December.

The initial lockdown and social distancing recommended during the pandemic had negative psychosocial impact on young people, but the same isolation seems to have altered substance use behavior, the study’s primary author, Richard Miech. “The pandemic stopped the cycle of new kids coming in and being recruited to drug use,” he told the Detroit News. While at home, away from school and youth gatherings such as athletic events and parties, alcohol, peer pressure is minimized.

The trend emerging from this study is baffling health promotion experts who have found limited success in persuading young adults to abandon negative health behaviors and adopt new ones. Perhaps simple separation – as undesirable as it may be for social development – reduces the opportunity that young people will get into trouble – a time-honored parental strategy.

“This trend in the reduction of substance use among teenagers is unprecedented,” said Nora D. Volkow, M.D., director of NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “We must continue to investigate factors that have contributed to this lowered risk of substance use to tailor interventions to support the continuation of this trend.”

Dennis Archambault is vice president of Public Affairs for Authority Health.