NYC teens reveal what they’re smoking and drinking
Zyns are in, cigarettes are back, everyone’s on amphetamines and drinking alcohol is done.
The Post spoke with nearly a dozen local high school students about what substances they are — and aren’t — using.
Nicotine pouches are becoming increasingly trendy, and Zyn is the brand of choice. NYC students report that more and more kids hooked on nicotine from vaping are switching to pouches — small white squares that dissolve and deliver nicotine through the gums — as a way to discreetly get their fix at school.
“[Students] put one in [their mouth] before class and just leave it in the whole time,” one girl, a 17-year-old junior at Stuyvesant High School, told The Post. “They’re bigger with boys.”
Zyn is far and away the favored brand, thanks in part to “Zynfluencers” who push the product on social media, but other brands such as Velo and Fre are also popular.
According to University of Michigan researchers, use of nicotine pouches among American high schoolers has doubled since just 2023.
“[Zyns are] like a fratty, white boy lacrosse player thing,” a 17-year-old boy, who lives in Manhattan and is a junior at a Bronx private school, revealed to The Post. “It’s very much an athlete thing.”
Nicotine pouches are considered slightly safer than smoking or vaping because the don’t impact the lungs, according to Yale Tobacco Center research scientist Meghan Morean, but they can still worsen stress, anxiety and depression in teens. (While nicotine use is also associated with cardiovascular issues, Morean noted that’s more of an issue for older people.)
Vaping nicotine still remains extremely popular, but it is actually on the decline in high schools. The number of high schoolers vaping peaked in 2019 with 5 million using nationwide. For older teens, vaping has since declined by 60%, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
“I’d say it’s more of a middle school thing at this point,” the junior at a private school in the Bronx sniffed.
Indeed, according to a 2023 CDC report, vaping is on the rise among middle schoolers — 3.5% of whom currently vape nationwide.
An 8th grader at a public school on the Upper East Side reports kids in her grade are already using Juuls to vape, in part to seem more mature.
“It’s mostly people I know who are friends with high schoolers that are doing it,” the 13-year-old said.
On thing that hasn’t changed over the decades: Nearly every teen said school bathrooms are a hotspot for getting high.
“You can hit someone’s vape in the bathroom, and it’s the easiest thing in the world because the teachers have their own bathrooms,” a 17-year-old girl who’s a junior at a Lower Manhattan public school explained.
At LaGuardia High School on the Upper West Side, bathroom substance use has become such an issue that, in recent years, the school has begun to lock restrooms during class hours.
“[My school] was huge on, in the bathroom specifically, just like tons of vaping, sometimes alcohol use, drug use,” one recent LaGuardia grad recalled. She said the famed arts schools started locking bathrooms during classes last year for that reason.
“You were only able to use the bathroom during passing time, because people would be going into the bathrooms rooms and skipping class and using,” she added.
The Post has reached out to LaGuardia for comment.
Old-school cigarettes are making a surprising comeback. Despite the health warnings, a new generation has become enamored with a retro cool factor.
“Cigarettes have an almost Lana Del Rey-style old-fashioned appeal,” the female Stuyvesant junior gushed, referencing the “A&W” singer, known for her sultry vintage look. “The cigarette is an aesthetic in itself.”
Three decades after Kate Moss defined the ’90s waif look, complete with a long, skinny cigarette in hand, that image still pervades. A junior girl at Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics said some kids smoke “for the off-duty model Kate Moss aesthetic” of the 1990s.
Meanwhile, is seems like the majority of kids use Adderall — some as prescribed to treat ADHD, others for recreation. It’s a blurry line.
“People like to snort Adderall just for the high,” one public school junior said.
“Everyone is on some sort of amphetamines at private schools,” a senior at Collegiate, an all-boys prep school, claimed. “Fifty percent of the kids at least.”
The Stuyvesant junior has also heard of students using mushrooms during school hours, but none of the kids who spoke to The Post knew of anyone using nitrous oxide, which media reports have claimed is on the rise.
One substance that’s shockingly on the decline is alcohol.
“Nobody really drinks anymore,” a 15-year-old sophomore at an Upper East Side public school said, guessing that it’s “probably phones” keeping kids glued to screens at home rather than partying together in person.
A Manhattan private school teacher agreed, saying “Online life has occupied leisure time so much that it’s curtailed … vices previous generations had growing up.”
“I don’t even hear kids talking about alcohol anymore,” another Manhattan high school teacher confirmed. “We don’t have any consequential issues with it.”
Across the country, teen alcohol use hit a record low in 2024, with just 42% of American high school seniors reporting drinking in the past month, way down from 75% in 1997, according to research out of the University of Michigan.
A 17-year-old female senior at an elite Manhattan prep school told The Post that if her peers have fake IDs, “it’s for weed, not for alcohol.”
The LaGuardia grad notes that access is, in part, driving the trend to not drink
“Kids are turning more towards vaping and weed just because it’s easier to get, especially in the city,” she said. “Liquor stores are less likely to sell to kids who look a certain age, whereas a smoke shop might not care that much.”
The Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics junior agreed.
“Smoke shops honestly just sell it to kids who they know are kids [and] they just don’t care,” she said, noting that delis near her school sell weed to kids. Others look to dealers via Instagram.
After one school’s smoke shop go-to was shut down by authorities in the past year, kids were quick to find a workaround.
“Now everyone just goes to newspaper stands because they don’t usually card,” one Tribeca public school junior explained.
Some students report their teachers seem to just accept kids being high as a fact of school life.
“Sometimes I think the teachers do notice when someone’s eyes are red, but they just don’t care,” a 17-year-old girl who attends a Manhattan public school said.
Dee Apple, an adolescent psychologist and a former director of counseling at a prep school, told The Post that his teen clients tend to vape their weed, which has one positive caveat: “The only relatively ‘good’ thing about this development is that … synthesized THC pods don’t contain the insecticides and pesticides illegal growers often use.”
But one high school teacher noted this can make things confusing: “I have no idea how to tell whether a kid is vaping nicotine or weed, it’s all just flavored vapor now.”
Certain THC vape flavors have been banned in New York, but teens report many smoke shops still carry flavored products.
However they’re consuming it, Apple warned that the cannabis kids are consuming nowadays is very different from their mom’s weed back in the day.
Just a couple decades ago the typical potency of THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, was 8 to 10%. Today, it’s upwards of 90%.
Said Apple: “It is like comparing the effects of a Bud Lite to taking 8 or 9 shots of tequila.”
