![](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-12.47.39-779x1024-2.png\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Newly published results of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey show a decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis.<\/p>\n
As of 2023, 17 percent of high-school students reported using marijuana within the past month, according to the newly released 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. That\u2019s down from 23 percent in 2013.<\/p>\n
The federal survey is conducted every two years and focuses on substance use, sexual behavior, mental health, experiences of violence and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.<\/p>\n
Though youth use rates have ticked up and down by a few percentage points from survey to survey within the 10-year timespan covered by the CDC report, the overall trend is that past-month use among high-school students has declined since 2013, the data show.<\/p>\n
Notably, male students showed a more marked drop in marijuana use over the past decade, with rates falling from 25 percent in 2013 to 15 percent in 2023. Among female students over the same time period, rates decreased from 22 percent to 19 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been promising declines in high school students\u2019 use of substances,\u201d the report notes. \u201cAll substance use behaviors included in this report decreased during the years that trends were measured. Since 2013, the percentage of students who currently drank alcohol, currently used marijuana, or had ever used select illicit drugs decreased.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decline in teen cannabis use is contrary to the fears of legalization opponents who have continually warned that ending prohibition of marijuana for adults would trigger large increases in youth consumption.<\/p>\n
Yet, past-month youth marijuana use rates fell across all surveyed racial groups during the past 10 years, the CDC data show.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-12.47.39-779x1024-1.png\")
<\/p>\nCDC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Over the most recent two-year period\u2014from 2021 to 2023\u2014high-school marijuana use rates rose slightly, from 16 percent to 17 percent among all surveyed students, though CDC reported the difference as \u201cno change\u201d in the new report.<\/p>\n
Past-month alcohol use among surveyed teens remained more popular than past-month cannabis use, meanwhile, though it also fell from 2013 to 2023, from 35 percent to 22 percent respectively.<\/p>\n
Twelve percent of students in 2023 said they had ever misused prescription opioids. That proportion has fallen slightly since the question was introduced in 2017. Four percent said they currently misuse prescription opioids\u2014a number that\u2019s dropped from 7 percent since the question was added in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese data show that we\u2019ve made some progress in tackling these issues in recent years, which proves that they are not insurmountable,\u201d CDC Division of Adolescent and School Health Director Kathleen Ethier said in a press release<\/a>. \u201cHowever, there\u2019s still much work ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n CDC<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The CDC report notes that female and LGBTQ+ students were more likely than their peers to engage in \u201cmost substance use behaviors,\u201d noting that nearly \u201c1 in 4 female students currently drank alcohol and 1 in 5 currently used marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n Further, it says that LGBTQ+ students \u201cwere about twice as likely as cisgender and heterosexual students to have ever used select illicit drugs and prescription opioids.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to cannabis, what\u2019s especially notable is that high-school student use of marijuana was trending up from 2009 from 2013\u2014before legal marijuana dispensaries started opening\u2014according to CDC data published last year<\/a>, but 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 findings of the latest CDC report reinforce similar findings that youth cannabis use rates have for the most part held steady or declined as more states have moved to legalize and regulate the drug.<\/p>\n A recent federal report published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), for example, found that consumption among minors\u2014defined as people 12 to 20 years of age\u2014fell slightly in the past year. Despite methodological changes that make comparisons over time difficult, it also suggests that youth use has fallen significantly in the past decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n The survey found that the percentage of young people aged 12 to 17 who\u2019ve ever tried marijuana dropped 18 percent from 2014, when the first legal recreational cannabis sales in the U.S. launched, to 2023. Past-year and past-month rates among young people also declined during that time period.<\/p>\n \u201cSensational claims that adult-use legalization laws are linked with greater marijuana use by teens are simply not backed by reliable data,\u201d NORML\u2019s deputy director, Paul Armentano, said of the SAMHSA report. \u201cThese government findings ought to reassure lawmakers that cannabis access can be legally regulated in a manner that is safe, effective, and that does not inadvertently impact young people\u2019s habits.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other side of the issue, Kevin Sabet, the president of the anti-marijuana advocacy group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, used the release of the report to reiterate his opposition to federal rescheduling of marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cThese drugs aren\u2019t safe and they aren\u2019t medicine,\u201d he\u00a0said. \u201cThis latest round of data should make it even more apparent that marijuana doesn\u2019t meet the criteria to be rescheduled by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n A separate poll published recently found that that more Americans smoke marijuana on a daily basis than drink alcohol every day\u2014and that\u00a0alcohol drinkers are more likely to say they would benefit from limiting their use<\/a>\u00a0than cannabis consumers are.<\/p>\n U.S. adults who drink alcohol are nearly three times as likely to say they\u2019d be better off reducing their intake of the drug compared to marijuana consumers who said they\u2019d benefit from using their preferred substance less often, the survey found. Further, it found that while lifetime and monthly alcohol drinking among adults was far more common than cannabis use, daily marijuana consumption was slightly more popular than daily drinking.<\/p>\n An earlier report published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs that found that\u00a0secondhand harm caused by marijuana use is far less prevalent than that of alcohol<\/a>, with respondents reporting secondhand harm from drinking at nearly six times the rate they did for cannabis.<\/p>\n Data from a Gallup survey published last August also found that Americans consider\u00a0marijuana to be less harmful than alcohol, cigarettes, vapes and other tobacco products<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another study out of Canada, where marijuana is federally legal, found that\u00a0legalization was \u201cassociated with a decline in beer sales,\u201d suggesting a substitution effect<\/a>.<\/p>\n Separate research published earlier this year found that the\u00a0use of marijuana alone was not associated with higher risk of a car crash<\/a>, while alcohol\u2014whether used by itself or combined with marijuana\u2014showed a clear correlation with increased odds of a collision.<\/p>\n As for legalization\u2019s impact on youth use of marijuana, multiple studies have debunked the idea that the reform broadly increases youth use, with most finding that consumption trends are either stable or decrease after the reform is implemented. Use by heavy users may increase, however.<\/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\u00a0states\u2019 adoption of laws to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to an increase in youth use<\/a>\u00a0of cannabis.<\/p>\n Another JAMA-published study earlier that month that similarly found that\u00a0neither legalization nor the opening of retail stores led to increases in youth cannabis use<\/a>.<\/p>\n Data from a recent\u00a0Washington 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 Rates of youth marijuana use in Colorado, meanwhile,\u00a0declined slightly in 2023\u2014remaining significantly lower than before legalization<\/a>. That\u2019s according to results of the biannual Healthy Kids Colorado Survey released this month that 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 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 Where Vice Presidential Candidate Tim Walz Stands On Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Teen Marijuana Use Has Fallen Over The Past Decade As More States Enacted Legalization, New CDC Report Shows<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Newly published results of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey show a decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis. As of 2023, 17 percent of high-school students reported using marijuana withinContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":77228,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77227"}],"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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77229,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77227\/revisions\/77229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-12.48.40-1024x785-1.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n
\nRead More: Teen Marijuana Use Has Fallen Over The Past Decade As More States Enacted Legalization, New CDC Report Shows<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"