Teen Cannabis Use Level or Down in States That Legalize

Here are 2 important news items from the cannabis space: A Decade of Data, and a bunch of really important organizations agree: Prohibitionists can suck it.

Let's start with a tongue-twisting headline from Kyle Jaeger at Marijuana Moment: “Youth Marijuana Use Remained Stable After States Started Enacting Legalization, Federal Report Finds” A new federal report is again challenging the prohibitionist narrative that state-level marijuana legalization leads to increased youth use. (Youth Use!)

THE SCOOP

It seems the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System provides data to the U.S. Department of Education, which has concluded that there’s been “no measurable difference” in the percentage of those in grades 9-12 who reported consuming cannabis in the past 30 days.

(Pure Bureaucratic Poetry! Here it is in English: The Youth Ain’t Putting their Monopoly Money on Weed no matter how many Dispensaries we put on Boardwalk.

• In 2009, before there were any REC states, 21% of high school kids reported using cannabis

• TEN YEARS LATER, that figure was a whopping 22%...

A DECADE OF DATA says … Yawn!

THE DEEP DIVE

And as for “leakage” from dispensaries, there were “no measurable differences in the percentage of students who reported that illegal drugs were made available to them on school property.”

I say it’s time the cannabis whiners get a new jam. But don’t take my word for it:

• The Center for Disease Control used their own algorithm on the same data and found that marijuana consumption among high school students has DECLINED

• The federally funded “Monitoring the Future” report released in 2020 shows that FEWER adolescents are using cannabis than in 2012. Funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse, old Harry Anslinger must be spinning in his grave!

• And finally, the anti-drug office of the White House acknowledged last summer that in states that have legalized, consumption by teens has FALLEN.

So… we have the

• Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System

• U.S. Department of Education

• The American Medical Association

• The Center for Disease Control

• The National Institute on Drug Abuse

• The Journal on Adolescent Health

• U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Organization

• The National Marijuana Initiative

• The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program of the White House

… in other words, EVERYONE BUT MY MOM saying the same thing: teens are not harmed by legalization.

1 in 5 use it, same as it ever was.

To the whiney Prohibitionists still crying that Legalization is putting their Babies on a Skateboard to Hell,

Knee Pads are on Aisle 4.

(without intentional irony the image above was sourced at Keep Kids Drug Free)