Every year, American high-school seniors are asked a simple question: how hard would it be to get each of these drugs, if you wanted some? Four decades of answers trace the rise and fall of whole drug eras — and end on a striking, broad retreat.
Each cell is the share of seniors who said a drug would be easy to get — brighter means more available. The brightest column was decades ago. By the 2020s nearly every row has cooled, with marijuana, vaping and alcohol still on top and the hard drugs faded to almost nothing. Blank gaps are survey years the table doesn’t cover; the hatched 2024 cells are flagged below.
“The newest thing on the list — vaping — arrived already near the top. The oldest fears have nearly vanished.”
Cocaine crested during the crack years of the late 1980s. LSD peaked in the late 1990s. Marijuana sat near-universal for thirty years before sliding. Tap a substance to add or remove it; lines break where the table skips years.
From 2023 to 2024 the drops were not scattered noise. Every category that fell significantly is a substance in common teen use — marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, and all four vaping products — each down four to eight points, many at the highest level of statistical confidence.
Marijuana, vaping and alcohol remain within easy reach for most seniors. The classic “hard drugs” sit at the bottom — crystal meth, heroin, crack and powder cocaine are now seen as easy to obtain by fewer than one in ten.
For amphetamines, sedatives, tranquilizers and “other narcotics,” the survey’s wording was overhauled in 2024. Their 2024 readings therefore jump in ways that look like real surges but are an effect of the new question — which is exactly why the source reports no 2023–2024 change for them:
Two more cautions worth keeping in mind: the table skips 1992–1996 and 2009–2013 entirely, and 2020 is suppressed for insufficient data. And in 2019 the survey switched from paper to electronic devices — but comparing the two modes that year, the gap averages under 2 points, far smaller than the post-2020 declines. The retreat is real, not a mode effect.
1. Availability tracks the drug of the moment. Cocaine’s late-1980s peak, LSD’s late-1990s bump, and vaping’s instant prominence after 2017 each mirror the era’s defining substance — perception follows culture.
2. The 2020s brought a broad retreat. Of the comparable substances, the large majority sit at or near their lowest perceived availability of the whole series in 2024 — a remarkably synchronized, across-the-board decline.
3. The one-year 2024 drop is concentrated where it matters. The significant declines are exactly the substances seniors most commonly use, all moving down together — a pattern more consistent with reduced access and exposure than with random year-to-year wobble.
A reminder. These are perceptions of availability, not actual supply or use. They describe what teenagers believe they could obtain — a leading signal, but a belief nonetheless.