![](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screen-Shot-2023-05-04-at-7.35.26-AM-1024x437-2.png\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Even as more states have moved to legalize marijuana, rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students have continued to drop, newly released federal data shows.<\/p>\n
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), published last week, found that teen use of all monitored substances\u2014including marijuana, alcohol and prescription drugs\u2014has \u201cdecreased linearly\u201d over the past decade.<\/p>\n
When it comes to cannabis, what\u2019s especially notable is that the federal study shows high school student use was trending up from 2009-2013\u2014before legal marijuana dispensaries started opening\u2014but has been generally on the decline since then. The first state recreational legalization laws were approved by voters in 2012, with regulated retail sales beginning in 2014.<\/p>\n
The latest data from the biennial survey shows that 15.8 percent of high school students reported using marijuana at least once in the past 30 days in 2021\u2014down from 21.7 percent in 2009 and significantly lower than the record high of 23.4 percent in 2013.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Screen-Shot-2023-05-04-at-7.35.26-AM-1024x437-1.png\")
<\/p>\nVia CDC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Health officials have been encouraged by the trend, though they\u2019ve pointed out that social isolation policies resulting from the coronavirus pandemic likely played a role in the extent to which substance misuse declined among youth in the most recent two-year period measured.<\/p>\n
Still, the overall trend conflicts with one of the most common prohibitionist arguments against marijuana legalization. Despite their claims that legalizing cannabis for adults would drive up teen usage, studies and surveys\u2014including those conducted or funded by the federal government\u2014have repeatedly shown otherwise.<\/p>\n
In fact, according to the YRBS survey, high school cannabis consumption was at its highest point in the years studies before any state had opened marijuana retailers for adults. And in the years since, as more and more markets have come online, fewer youth say they\u2019re using cannabis.<\/p>\n
Teens are also reporting lower rates of lifetime marijuana consumption. In 2021, 27.8 percent of teens said they\u2019ve used cannabis at least once in their lifetime, a nearly 10 percentage point drop from 2019 when the rate was 36.8 percent.<\/p>\n
Again, the peak lifetime use for marijuana was in 2013 (40.7 percent), before any states had opened adult-use cannabis retailers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYouth substance use has declined over the past decade, including during the COVID-19 pandemic,\u201d a supplementary report<\/a> from CDC says, \u201chowever, substance use remains common among U.S. high school students, and continued monitoring is important in the context of the changing marketplaces for alcohol beverage products and other drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cScaling-up tailored, evidence-based policies, programs, and practices to reduce factors that contribute to risk for adolescent substance use and promote factors that protect against risk might help build on recent declines,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n New CDC data available: See the latest data on health risks and experiences among U.S. high school students. #CDCYRBS<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/ileEb4Od54<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 CDC\u2019s Division of Adolescent and School Health (@CDC_DASH) May 1, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n While COVID likely contributed to the abrupt decline<\/a> in cannabis and other substance use measured in 2021, the marijuana trends have been consistent over the course of the reform movement.<\/p>\n Last year, for example, a National Institute on Drug Abuse- (NIDA) funded study that was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that state-level cannabis legalization is not associated with increased youth use<\/a>.<\/p>\n The study demonstrated 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 Yet another federally funded study from Michigan State University researchers\u00a0that was published in the journal PLOS One<\/a>\u00a0last 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\u00a0the latest version of a biennial state survey<\/a>\u00a0released last year.<\/p>\n A\u00a0study out of California last year<\/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\u00a0report last year analyzing data on youth marijuana use rates<\/a>\u00a0amid the state-level legalization movement.<\/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 in 2021 year found that enacting legalization has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is\u00a0\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 There was\u00a0\u201cno change\u201d in the rate of current cannabis use<\/a>\u00a0among high school students from 2009-2019, an earlier CDC 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 Pennsylvania Lawmakers File Bill To Legalize Marijuana Sales Through State-Run Stores<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<\/div>\n Photo courtesy of Martin Alonso<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Teen Marijuana Use Has Been Declining Since Legal Dispensaries Started Opening, Federal CDC Study Shows<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Even as more states have moved to legalize marijuana, rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students have continued to drop, newly released federal data shows. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), published last week, found that teen use ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":64617,"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\/64616"}],"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=64616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64618,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64616\/revisions\/64618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n\n
\n
\nRead More: Teen Marijuana Use Has Been Declining Since Legal Dispensaries Started Opening, Federal CDC Study Shows<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"