Rates of youth marijuana use in Colorado declined slightly in 2023\u2014remaining significantly lower than before the state became one of the first in the U.S. to legalize cannabis for adults, contradicting prohibitionist arguments that the reform would lead to increased underage consumption.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to the latest biannual Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which found that past-30-day use of cannabis among high schoolers was at 12.8 percent in 2023, a dip from the 13.3 percent reported in 2021.<\/p>\n
In fact, since the first retail cannabis shops opened in Colorado in 2014, youth marijuana use has gradually declined<\/a>. It\u2019s fallen nearly 7 percentage points since 2013, when past-30-day use among high schoolers was at 19.7 percent.<\/p>\n The latest data is all the more notable when considering the dip since 2021, as some expected rates would have increased given that COVID social distancing restrictions were lifted and students generally returned to in-person schooling.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were very happy to see that dramatic historical drop, but assumed that the drop was at least partially because many youth were schooling from home during the pandemic and not around peers, which was why the dramatic decrease occurred,\u201d Eric Escudero, communications director for the Denver\u2019s Department of Excise & Licenses and the Office of Marijuana Policy, told Marijuana Moment. \u201cWe were bracing for a massive surge today in youth who said they used marijuana in Denver. And it did not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to the regulatory safeguards that have been put in place under legalization, Escudero also pointed to the government\u2019s cannabis tax-funded investment in youth prevention.<\/p>\n \u201cDenver led the way as the first American city with legalized recreational marijuana, and we made a promise that we would use a portion of marijuana tax dollars on youth prevention,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have kept that promise with one of the most highly successful youth marijuana usage prevention campaigns in U.S. history.\u201d<\/p>\n For advocates, the new report reinforces a key argument in favor of adult-use legalization. That is, enacting a system of regulated sales where ID checks are mandated would mitigate youth access issues and actually lead to decreased underage use.<\/p>\n To that point, the Colorado survey<\/a> also shows that perceived ease of access is also down among youth, with 40.4 percent of respondents saying it would be \u201csort of easy\u201d or \u201cvery easy\u201d to obtain cannabis in 2023. By contrast, 54.9 percent said the same in 2013 prior to the launch of legal marijuana sales to adults.<\/p>\n Last year, Colorado marijuana regulators announced that out of 285 underage sales checks conducted at state-licensed cannabis stores in 2023, there were only four failures\u2014a compliance rate of about 99 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n Multiple studies have debunked the idea that marijuana legalization increases youth use, with most finding that consumption trends are either stable or decrease after the reform is implemented.<\/p>\n For example, a research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in April said there\u2019s no evidence that states\u2019 adoption of laws to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to an increase in youth use<\/a> of cannabis.<\/p>\n Another JAMA-published study earlier that month that similarly found that neither legalization nor the opening of retail stores led to increases in youth cannabis use<\/a>.<\/p>\n Data from a recent Washington State survey of adolescent and teenage students<\/a>\u00a0found overall declines in both lifetime and past-30-day marijuana use since legalizations, with striking drops in recent years that held steady through 2023. The results also indicate that perceived ease of access to cannabis among underage students has generally fallen since the state enacted legalization for adults in 2012.<\/p>\n A separate study late last year also found that Canadian high-school students reported\u00a0it was more difficult to access marijuana since the government legalized the drug nationwide<\/a>\u00a0in 2019. The prevalence of current cannabis use also fell during the study period, from 12.7 percent in 2018\u201319 to 7.5 percent in 2020\u201321, even as retail sales of marijuana expanded across the country.<\/p>\n In December, meanwhile, a U.S. health official said that teen marijuana use has not increased\u00a0\u201ceven as state legalization has proliferated across the country.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThere have been no substantial increases at all,\u201d said Marsha Lopez, chief of the National Institute on Drug Abuse\u2019s (NIDA) epidemiological research branch. \u201cIn fact, they have not reported an increase in perceived availability either, which is kind of interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Another earlier analysis from CDC found that\u00a0rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students<\/a>\u00a0have continued to drop amid the legalization movement.<\/p>\n A study of high school students in Massachusetts that was published last November found that\u00a0youth in that state were no more likely to use marijuana after legalization<\/a>, though more students perceived their parents as cannabis consumers after the policy change.<\/p>\n A separate NIDA-funded study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2022 also found that state-level\u00a0cannabis legalization was not associated with increased youth use<\/a>. 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 2022 study from Michigan State University researchers,\u00a0published in the journal PLOS One<\/a>, 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 The trends were observed despite\u00a0adult use of marijuana and certain psychedelics reaching \u201chistoric highs\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in 2022, according to separate data released last year.<\/p>\n New Hampshire Medical Marijuana Expansion Bills Head To Governor\u2019s Desk As Recreational Legalization Measure Fails<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Youth Marijuana Use In Colorado Continues To Decline Since Legalization Took Effect, Contradicting Prohibitionist Fears<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Rates of youth marijuana use in Colorado declined slightly in 2023\u2014remaining significantly lower than before the state became one of the first in the U.S. to legalize cannabis for adults, contradicting prohibitionist arguments that the reform would lead to increased underage consumption. That\u2019s according to the latest biannual Healthy KidsContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"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\/76323"}],"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=76323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76324,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76323\/revisions\/76324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Youth Marijuana Use In Colorado Continues To Decline Since Legalization Took Effect, Contradicting Prohibitionist Fears<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"