As the New York Times reports in a hardhitting investigation about bodega weed, the progress teenagers have achieved in the past decade is in jeopardy (because of the pandemic and also, bodega weed).
Before the pandemic upended the lives of American teenagers with such catastrophic results, they were, at least by certain measures, doing relatively well. Over the past decade, rates of drug and alcohol use, as well as sexual activity, had been in decline. Between 2011 and 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of high school students who reported using marijuana dropped from 23 percent to 16 percent. The fear now was that all this progress would roll back as the crises around learning loss and mental health, brought on by so many months of isolation, were meeting a moment of disinhibition, nihilism and a carnival culture around the sale of weed.
This is a common trope in the unending old people’s obsessions with teens’ sex lives. I’m not Matt Gaetz so I have no dog in this fight. But, why is this supposed to be a good thing?
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