Editor's Note: Below is an interesting excerpt from a recent institutional research note written by our Demography analyst Neil Howe. To access his research email sales@hedgeye.com.
As risk-taking Xers and Boomers continue to move into older age brackets, they are undermining the long-observed notion that drug use declines with age. Fully 6.7% of 55- to 64-year-olds use marijuana on a monthly basis, higher than the share of 12- to 17-year-olds who do so (6.4%).
Back in the late 1960s and '70s, there were virtually no illegal substances that junior and high-school students were not using at much higher rates than their "square" Greatest Generation parents pushing age 60.
For those too young to recall: Imagine a slightly older and less flappable version of Red in "That Seventies Show."
Today, we see the reverse.
There are very few illegal substances that school-age teens are not using at lower rates than their first-wave Xer parents--everything from cocaine and meth to tranquilizers and opioids.
And, yes, that includes marijuana, the use of which among teens in school has been declining over the past decade. (See: "Annual Demographics Outlook.")
Older generations may be ready to turn pot into a booming legal industry, but apparently they're stricter about preventing their kids from sampling before leaving home.
