It's the four letter word...WEED.
Most young people would rather do that than alcohol. And it's legal so no different in their mind. I know young guys that are college athletes and they can smoke and not feel bad the next day whereas if they had the same effect from drinking they would be hurting.
It's probably no more expensive these days either.
On the party scale, my young (24-28) fishing buddies tell me way more young people are doing shrooms and just as many, often the Greek row types, are doing cocaine. They literally have testers. You can buy testers for pretty cheap that are better than the DEA had just a few years ago.
Cocaine is the most pure it's ever been. I know a kid that would rather start the party with some smoke and see how it goes. If it's a rager then it's coke time. He said he's rarely hung over and only does the pure stuff.
Obviously there's issues here, and frats boys still drink a lot, but from what he was saying it's way less than "back in the day."
I know weed is legal and supposedly not physically addictive, but rather mentally addictive. Not sure.. all I know is I watched one of my best friends become a "pot head". He was a telecom engineer, like me, and I saw him stop learning. I also saw him look for his pipe for about an hour. By the end of that hour his hands were shaking like crazy.
Guess we'll see what ends being better in the end. Hopefully Gen Z is just doing less of everything and eats better than we did. I think one of their biggest issues is these stupid energy drinks. Every coffee stand now has 15 different "energy" drinks. That stuff can't be good for you.
Man, I need a PBR after typing all that.