Indiana Youth Survey Finds Teen Substance Use at Decade Low

Indiana teenagers reported continued declines in vaping, drinking and other substance use in 2026, with several measures falling to their lowest levels since the state's current survey methods were adopted in 2015. The 2026 Indiana Youth Survey, conducted by Prevention Insights at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, collected usable responses from 53,879 students in grades six through 12 at 183 schools — the survey's 32nd administration and one of the largest state-level assessments of adolescent substance use in the country.

Past-month vaping among 12th graders fell to 8.2 percent, compared with 9.6 percent in 2024 and a peak of nearly 29 percent in 2018. For seventh, eighth and 10th through 12th grades, the result marked a fourth consecutive biennial decline. Among ninth graders, past-month vaping dropped to 5.8 percent, down from 16.7 percent in 2018, while only 2.4 percent of sixth graders reported vaping.

Alcohol measures moved in the same direction. Past-30-day alcohol use hit its lowest point since 2015 across every grade, and binge drinking among 12th graders fell to 4.4 percent — down from 16.7 percent in 2015. Heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other illicit drugs remained uncommon.

What is driving the decline

"The 2026 findings are encouraging and indicate that rates of youth substance use continue to move in the right direction across Indiana," said Jon Agley, an associate professor at the IU school and executive director of Prevention Insights. "While it has anecdotally seemed like these positive shifts have been continuing in Indiana, the survey data gives us clearer knowledge about what Hoosier youth are experiencing."

The survey offers no single explanation, but it does track the factors associated with use. Students who reported strong parental disapproval, strong peer disapproval and difficulty obtaining substances were consistently less likely to report using alcohol, tobacco or cannabis. Those associations have held across prior administrations of the survey, which has run since 1991 and became biennial in 2018.

One durable pattern the 2026 data reinforces is how badly teenagers misjudge their classmates. For seventh through 12th graders combined, the past-month cigarette smoking rate was 1.1 percent, but students estimated on average that 22.5 percent of their peers smoked. Agley said that gap matters because perceived peer use is itself a driver of behavior.

"There's really strong perceptions that a lot of kids are using these substances, and that's not true anymore," he said. "And the reason that matters is there's an association between peer perception and substance use."

Where the risk remains

Indiana's numbers echo a national pattern of falling adolescent substance use, but they also leave room for concern. Vaping remains the most common method of cannabis use among students who report past-month marijuana use, and electronic vapor products are still the most-used tobacco product among Indiana adolescents — a reminder that the devices that drove the last decade's youth nicotine wave have not disappeared, even as the share of students using them has shrunk. Students whose cannabis use has become more than experimental face a disorder with no approved medication, managed through therapy and behavioral support rather than pharmacotherapy.

The 2026 survey added several new areas of measurement, including bullying, cyberbullying and social media use, along with questions on where students obtain vaping products and what consequences they associate with substance use. Those additions place the substance-use findings alongside mental health indicators rather than treating them as a separate domain — a shift that matches the co-occurring nature of much adolescent behavioral health need.

Rates are not zero, and the survey makes the persistent gender, race and rural-urban differences visible in its breakdowns. Agley said the next step is understanding which prevention efforts produced the declines and how to sustain them. "We still want to have a focus on substance use prevention," he said. "You know the numbers are not zero, and so there's always room for improvement."

The full 2026 report is published on the Indiana Youth Survey website, and participating schools use their local results to identify needs, evaluate prevention programming and support grant applications. The survey is administered under contract with Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration, Division of Mental Health and Addiction. The next statewide administration is scheduled for 2028.