{"id":58508,"date":"2022-11-24T09:27:07","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/federally-funded-study-shows-marijuana-legalization-is-not-associated-with-increased-teen-use\/"},"modified":"2022-11-24T17:45:24","modified_gmt":"2022-11-25T01:45:24","slug":"federally-funded-study-shows-marijuana-legalization-is-not-associated-with-increased-teen-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2022\/11\/24\/federally-funded-study-shows-marijuana-legalization-is-not-associated-with-increased-teen-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Federally Funded Study Shows Marijuana Legalization Is Not Associated With Increased Teen Use"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A new study funded by a top federal drug agency has found that state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use.<\/p>\n

The research article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequency of use among adolescents from 1999 to 2020 in Oregon, New York and Washington State.<\/p>\n

Washington voters legalized marijuana in 2012, followed by those in Oregon in 2014. New York moved to enact legalization last year, but retail stores haven\u2019t opened yet, with regulators saying that will likely start happening before the end of this year.<\/p>\n

With marijuana legalization on the ballot in five states across the U.S. this month, opponents have repeatedly made the argument that the reform would lead more underage people to use cannabis, despite numerous studies contradicting that point.<\/p>\n

Now another study has similarly debunked the argument, with researchers at the University of Washington, Colorado State University and Oregon Social Learning Center finding that the \u201cchange in legalization status across adolescence was not significantly related to within-person change in the probability or frequency of self-reported past-year cannabis use.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study, which received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), showed that \u201cyouth who spent more of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15 years than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"🆕\" NIDA-funded research in @AmJPrevMed<\/a>: Effects of Cannabis Legalization on Adolescent Cannabis Use Across 3 Studies https:\/\/t.co\/UpYSFOD7nV<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 NIDAnews (@NIDAnews) November 17, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\u201cTaken together with previous studies, these findings add weight to the conclusion that adolescent cannabis use is holding steady in the wake of legalization, at least in the years relatively proximate to the policy change,\u201d the research article says. \u201cThis analyses expand on previous findings by specifically parsing variance in adolescent cannabis use owing to age, sex, birth cohort (i.e., population-level trends in use), and legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cFindings are not consistent with changes in the prevalence or frequency of adolescent cannabis use after legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This builds on an already sizable body of scientific literature that\u2019s similarly determined that creating regulated cannabis markets for adults either has a neutral effect on underage use, or is even associated with declines in the behavior.<\/p>\n

For example, another federally funded study from Michigan State University researchers that was published in the journal PLOS One<\/a> this summer found that \u201ccannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults\u201d in legal states, \u201cbut not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, adolescent marijuana use in Colorado declined significantly in 2021, according to the latest version of a biennial state survey<\/a> released in June.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we do look at our study along with the other studies that have asked similar questions, the pattern of results so far is encouraging,\u201d University of Washington\u2019s Jennifer Bailey, author of the new NIDA-funded study<\/a>, told Marijuana Moment. \u201cThat is, most studies are not showing increases in teen cannabis use following legalization of cannabis for adults.\u201d<\/p>\n

She cautioned, however, that \u201cwe need to keep monitoring teen cannabis use in the wake of legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough things look encouraging now, as we note in our paper, alcohol use increased slowly over 40 years after the end of alcohol prohibition,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, it may take more time for us to see any effects of legalization on teen cannabis use. Hopefully, trends will continue as they are going now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advocates have long argued that providing regulated access to marijuana at stores where there are requirements to check ID, for example, would mitigate the risk of adolescent consumption.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recent study out of California<\/a>\u00a0found that \u201cthere was 100 percent compliance with the ID policy to keep underage patrons from purchasing marijuana directly from licensed outlets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education, and Regulation (CPEAR), an alcohol and tobacco industry-backed marijuana policy group, also released a report this year analyzing data on youth marijuana use rates<\/a>\u00a0amid the state-level legalization movement.<\/p>\n

One of the most recent federally funded surveys on the topic stressed that\u00a0youth marijuana use \u201cdecreased significantly\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in 2021, as did teen consumption of illicit substances overall.<\/p>\n

The 2020 federally funded Monitoring the Future survey further found that cannabis consumption among adolescents \u201cdid not significantly change<\/a>\u00a0in any of the three grades for lifetime use, past 12-month use, past 30-day use, and daily use from 2019-2020.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another federally funded study, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), was released in October\u00a0showing that youth marijuana use dropped in 2020<\/a>\u00a0amid the coronavirus pandemic and as more states moved to enact legalization.<\/p>\n

Further, an analysis published by the Journal of the American Medical Association last year found that enacting legalization has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is \u201cstatistically indistinguishable from zero.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Education\u2019s National Center for Education Statistics also analyzed youth surveys of high school students from 2009 to 2019 and concluded that there\u2019s been \u201cno measurable difference\u201d in the percentage of those in grades 9-12 who reported consuming cannabis at least once in the past 30 days.<\/p>\n

In a separate, earlier analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that marijuana consumption among high school students declined during the peak years of state-legal recreational cannabis legalization.<\/p>\n

There was\u00a0\u201cno change\u201d in the rate of current cannabis use<\/a>\u00a0among high school students from 2009-2019, the survey found. When analyzed using a quadratic change model, however, lifetime marijuana consumption decreased during that period.<\/p>\n

Another study released by Colorado officials in 2020 showed that\u00a0youth cannabis consumption in the state \u201chas not significantly changed since legalization\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in 2012, though methods of consumption are diversifying.<\/p>\n

An official with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy\u2019s National Marijuana Initiative went even further in 2020, admitting that, for reasons that are unclear,\u00a0youth consumption of cannabis \u201cis going down\u201d in Colorado<\/a>\u00a0and other legalized states and that it\u2019s \u201ca good thing\u201d even if \u201cwe don\u2019t understand why.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Feds Release Updated Marijuana Banking Info, Including New State-Level Breakdown, As Congress Considers Reform<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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The post Federally Funded Study Shows Marijuana Legalization Is Not Associated With Increased Teen Use<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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A new study funded by a top federal drug agency has found that state-level marijuana legalization is not associated with increased youth cannabis use. The research article, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine this month, looked at data from three longitudinal studies on past-year cannabis consumption and frequencyContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":58509,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,15462],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58508"}],"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\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58510,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58508\/revisions\/58510"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}