Weed is now more popular among young women than men

Weed is now more popular among women than men, a survey has found

According to the CDC's 2011-2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which analyses survey responses from 17,000 teenagers, young people are resorting to illegal substances as a coping mechanism less frequently.

But for the first time in the survey's 30-year history, young women reported using marijuana and other illicit drugs at a higher rate than young men.

Kathleen Ethier, the CDC's Director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) and one of the people behind the Youth Risk Behavior Survey spoke about the data to VICE.

She said: "Substance use among young people has been moving in the right direction in the last 10 years. I think what's clear from this data, however, is that those improvements are happening differently across groups of young people.

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"So although overall, we see improvements in the proportion of young people who drink alcohol, we see that for instance, it's improving more for males than it is for females. If you look at 2011, there was really no difference in alcohol use in the past 30 days between males and females. By 2021, they're significantly different from each other."

She added: "Across most of the data in this report, teenage girls and LGBTQ+ students are experiencing more negative outcomes. I don't know that the marijuana data is any different than that. And that's kind of part of a larger picture."

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