Alcohol

More on the subject of how much worse previous generations were:

"alcohol use among high school students has fallen dramatically. The Monitoring the Future surveys conducted by the University of Michigan show that in 1991, 81% of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders had had at least one drink in their lives; by last year, the figure was only 58%. Roughly 47% of this cohort had been drunk at least once in 1991; in 2007 only 38% had ever been drunk. On college campuses, meanwhile, the ranks of nondrinkers are rising steadily. In 1980 only 18% of college students surveyed for Monitoring the Future said they had not had a drink in the past month; by 2006 the proportion had risen to 35%."
Source

It is also true that there is a sizable minority that drinks a great deal more than in the recent past. The linked article makes a pretty good argument that our drinking laws caused a polarization in drinking between those who drink a lot, and those who don't drink.