There is data that drug use including alcohol is significantly lower for current young people than previous generations, but it's still early days and there is mixed reporting around prescription drugs being used recreationally or self-medicating with those drugs bought online that may not be picked up in all the data collection around this.
My parents and their friends partied hard with drugs (including prescription ones).
My party vice was sex.
I think these talks are part of continuous conversations starting from body knowledge, caring for ourselves, and risk considerations when they're little. The many harm reduction resources out there can make that conversation in secondary easier, but it starts with those conversations and working through that discomfort of talking about awkward topics for both parent and child, I think.
In early secondaryish, we start talking about and exploring where to find good information about and risk analysis conversations around drugs, sex, and other things that can turn to vices. I think it's important they know where to find good information well beyond me or school (which it's been noticable in a very overfull PSHE curriculum, these topics can get dropped/rushed, even more now with COVID having squeezed year groups that would have covered topics in the last two years but haven't yet) so we look through different websites on it together and talk about it for a few evenings (bribed with popcorn or similar at times to help with the awkward).
With older teens, we discuss how other people have balanced the benefits with the risks, measures people put in place like having a personal limit or how they keep track of what's been taken & emergency safety. We discuss the harsh reality that there are addicts on every branch on their family tree - 3 of their grandparents had major addiction issues, 1 not so much but it was still there and had impact, among other family members so with the data around genetic predisposition, they're likely at more risk compared to some of their peers so reducing those risks is important. We also discuss the benefits people are looking for in drug use, including potential medical uses of things currently deemed illegal/recreational, and similar because I don't think we can really reduce risks without discussing the benefits and working on self-awareness around what we're looking for and what's actually available from what we're going for.
Like yeah, sex can be fun, and when that was all young me was looking for with someone who felt the same, I could make a better risk analysis, but often that wasn't what I was actually looking for, and what I was looking for couldn't be found in sex, just like what my parents wanted in drugs wasn't always to be found there either. My father in his 60s finally admitted to me that his drug use was more about acceptance / image with his friends (he has drug arrests dating from when I was a teenager, his drug use was why we didn't talk for many years so when we started to reconcile, we had to talk about that). I can now admit that sometimes I was looking for pleasure which could be there, but other times I was just trying to prove my mother and others wrong about being unlovable and other things which sex could never give me proof of, but I had the social messages in my teen brain that screamed otherwise. Discussing those social messages vs reality is part of risk reduction, I think, as they skew our ability to balance the actual benefits vs the actual risks. Part of making those choices well is knowing why which can be difficult.