A new report from RAND says young adults who live near dispensaries use marijuana more than their peers and have a more positive view of the drug.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0the research<\/a>\u00a0led by Regina Shih, director of RAND\u2019s Social and Behavioral Policy Program, and a senior behavioral and social scientist at the corporation, people aged 18 to 22 were most likely to consume cannabis if they lived near dispensaries that also had storefront signs.<\/p>\n The authors suggested that their results showed that governments could regulate that kind of dispensary signage as one strategy for dropping marijuana use rates in the young adult demographic.<\/p>\n This research is the first to show that storefront marijuana signage is a major factor in the associations between the higher density of dispensaries, greater use of marijuana and positive views about the drug, RAND says. <\/p>\n However, the study also\u00a0directly contradicts another one published this June in the Substance Abuse and Misuse journal<\/a>, which found that living near dispensaries actually had\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0correlation with young adults using cannabis.<\/p>\n The RAND research was conducted on a group of 1,887 young adults in Los Angeles County surveyed online from 2016 to 2017. The things the researchers were looking for included past month marijuana use, especially stats on frequency like days used and how many times. Other data points collected included whether or not the young people expected positive results from cannabis and how they perceived their peers\u2019 use.<\/p>\n The study then matched the responses with the participants\u2019 home locations and the number of dispensaries available to them locally within 4 miles of their homes.<\/p>\n RAND found that nearly 85% of the young adults participating in the study had \u201c10 or more dispensaries within 4 miles of their home.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers adjusted the results to account for \u201cindividual-level sociodemographic characteristics and neighborhood socioeconomic status\u201d and found that the data \u201cindicated that living near a higher number of [dispensaries] was associated with a greater number of days used in the past month.\u201d<\/p>\n Furthermore, results showed living near dispensaries with storefront signage \u201chad a four-to-six-fold larger effect on the number of times used per day and positive expectancies, respectively, compared with associations with the total [medical marijuana dispensary] count.\u201d So, the signage is likely proving a bigger issue than the dispensaries themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cOur findings suggest that as the marijuana retail outlets become more visible and more numerous, they may influence the way that young adults perceive and use marijuana,\u201d said Shih\u00a0in an announcement<\/a>\u00a0on the study. \u201cAttention is needed on access to marijuana for young adults, as marijuana use is most prevalent among this age group and is also associated with increased risk for several substance use disorders.\u201d<\/p>\n We reached out to Dr. Amanda Reiman to get her take on the new numbers from RAND. Reiman was the point person in California for the Drug Policy Alliance\u2019s participation in the Prop 64 effort to get cannabis legalized in the Golden State and now works as the Vice President of Community Relations for\u00a0Flow Kana<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my opinion, the biggest flaw with the study had to do with the time period they chose,\u201d Reiman told Cannabis Now in an email. \u201c2016-2017 saw a huge change in how dispensaries were accessed. Those under 21 needed to still have a [medical recommendation] card to get in [to dispensaries], availability on the illicit market shifted, legalization reduced the stigma and increased store participation and willingness to admit [use]\u2026 and the changes in regulation led to all kinds of sales and product dumping at low prices that was a brief (but glorious) point in time.\u201d<\/p>\n Reiman thinks the researchers could have been a little more careful in their approach.<\/p>\n \u201cThe researchers should know better and what they really should say is that \u2018the transition period from a medical to adult-use market in Los Angeles was associated with higher dispensary participation by young adults.\u2019 And isn\u2019t that what we want? For those who choose to use cannabis to buy it from regulated stores and not from the street? I mean, isn\u2019t that the point?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n And the choice of timeline can have serious ramifications on the results. In fact,\u00a0the aforementioned study published in the Substance Abuse and Misuse journal<\/a> looked at people ages 18 to 26 in Los Angeles from the years 2014 to 2015. They found no relationship between living near dispensaries and using cannabis more.<\/p>\n Choosing an age group of 18 to 22 is also fraught, given that recreational use of cannabis for those over 21 was legalized in California in November of 2016, but people 18 and older have been able to receive a medical marijuana recommendation since Prop. 215 passed in 1996.<\/p>\n Reiman also noted that the RAND study did not look at those under 18, who would only be able to access medical marijuana with permission from a parental guardian and a doctor. Given this age range, Reiman noted that \u201ctheir conclusions are actually pretty underwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long after the RAND research dropped,\u00a0Oxford Treatment<\/a>\u00a0released their new study from SAMHSA\u2019s national drug use survey to map out youth marijuana use within the last reported year (2017), along with the year-over-year change in use in each state.<\/p>\n The most recent reported data showed teens in Vermont (17.9%), Colorado (17%), Oregon (17%), Alaska (16.5%), and Montana (15.9%) had the highest marijuana use in the country.<\/p>\n California was a bit behind the leaders, with only 13.3% of children 17 and under reporting to have used marijuana in the last year. California was essentially tied in youth use rates with Indiana, where if caught with less than an ounce, you can face up to\u00a0180 days in jail.<\/a><\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you think dispensaries should be able to advertise?<\/p>\n The post Study: Young Adults Living Near Dispensaries With Ads Consume More Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
A new report from RAND says young adults who live near dispensaries use marijuana more than their peers and have a more positive view of the drug. According to\u00a0the research\u00a0led by Regina Shih, director of RAND\u2019s Social and Behavioral Policy Program, and a senior behavioral and social scientist at theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,99,141,687,575,10395,10396,10397],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36163,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36162\/revisions\/36163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Problem With the Study\u2019s Timeline & Age Range<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Study: Young Adults Living Near Dispensaries With Ads Consume More Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"