Modern Teens Are Choosing Weed Over Alcohol, Study Says

Teenagers are now more likely to smoke marijuana than to binge drink alcohol, according to a study.

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Who knows what the hell teenagers like—what with their Snapchats, and their youth, and their Teen Choice Awards, and their saying "goals" all the time. Except that scientists do kind of know what the hell modern teenagers like, and that thing is weed, according to a new Project Know study as reported on by The Washington Post.

There was a time when teens preferred alcohol over weed, as evidenced by most teen comedies of the '90s and 2000s, as well as previous studies, but that time has apparently passed. When you ask kids aged 12 to 17 what they've done in the past 30 days, they're statistically more likely to say weed smoking than binge drinking, according to the study. 

Project Know broke the results down by state and district. For instance, when surveying teens in Washington, D.C., which had the highest rate of weed-smoking teens, 32 percent percent of them said they'd smoked in the past month, while only 14 percent copped to binge drinking. Other places where a high percentage of teens said they'd smoked included New Mexico, (27.8 percent), Washington (26.7 percent), Connecticut (26 percent) and Vermont (25.7 percent).

While marijuana use was higher overall across the U.S., some states did have more teen drinkers than smokers, especially in the middle of the country. Here's a map that breaks it down by state. 

The states with the most binge drinking teens were led by West Virginia, where 24.4 percent of teens said they'd done it, while only 19 percent said they'd smoked. The other top teen drinking states were Montana (23.5 percent),  New Jersey (23 percent), Iowa (23 percent) and Arkansas (22.9 percent). 

New Mexico gets the honor of being the state where the most teens said they'd used cocaine (10.3 percent), followed closely by Arizona and California. Arkansas had the highest rate of teens abusing prescription drugs with 21.5 percent.

Take comfort, though, if all this teen weed smoking is the type of thing that makes you uncomfortable. While teens may be smoking weed more than drinking, another study shows that weed usage overall amongst teens is down from a few years ago. And even if they are smoking, yet another study says that it won't affect their health anyway

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