Monitoring the Future

That makes sense.

Now, where can people find out more about you and where can they get a copy of your book? And the study that we referenced today was the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study.

But let's talk about where we can get your book and your workbook.

The book is entitled The Addicted Child, A Parent's Guide to Adolescent Substance Abuse.

But one thing that's changed is how regularly teenagers are drinking them.

According to the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, 23% of American 12th graders reported having an energy drink or energy shot at least once a day in 2025.

That's nearly one in four students.

And we're talking about drinks that can contain a substantial amount of caffeine.

I mean, I think we and our editor, another person on our staff, Chris Shepard, who's been at the company longer than I have, has done a lot of the work on some of the consumption survey trends.

And he just wrote a bunch of different articles about, you know, Gallup polls monitoring the future, NISDA, there's all this great data that really, I mean, I guess unfortunately to some degree for our business does point to a decline in consumption habits for there's like the younger drinkers.

There's also, some of it is that problem drinkers are lowering.

So it's the people who were drinking at a problematic rate, aren't drinking that way.

There are so many factors and the economy is as high on the list as I could think of for what's driving it.

The

other encouraging part of those surveys, right, there is a decline in consumption and it's shown across a number of different surveys, not just Gallup, which gets a lot of media attention, but you have Monitoring the Future, you have NISDA as well.

But what they consistently show is that, yes, young LDA drinkers are drinking less in their very early 20s when their first turning of legal drinking age.

That started to creep up after 2008.

Also, I have data on this from a group called Monitoring the Future that about 15% of people always said my life feels meaningless until about 2008 and it started to come up.

And now it's about half say my life feels meaningless.

About half fail that exam.

And we've been conducting the study every single year since 1975.

It's called Monitoring the Future.

Oh, wow.

And so we have many, many generations, including our generation, And we've been studying their drinking patterns and other substance use patterns.

Did that catch you by surprise? But nationally, teen cannabis use remains, guess what, historically low.

The 2025 Monitoring the Future survey, it found past-year marijuana use among 12th graders at 26% and among 10th graders at 16%, and that's the lowest levels recorded for those grades in, guess what, nearly three decades, everyone.

Yeah, that catch you again by surprise? And among eighth graders, the figure was just 8%.

So when you think about that, that complicates the argument that legal adult use markets would automatically lead to dramatically higher marijuana consumption amongst teenagers.