Teens living in Colorado and Washington are using less marijuana now than they did when it was illegal, according to federal data.
It seems while marijuana prohibitionists cannot help but lean on old-school propaganda tactics when trying to combat the progress of the marijuana movement, the latest findings from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health provides additional evidence suggesting that all of the noise about legal marijuana turning children into smokers is simply talk.
The survey shows that only around 18 percent of the kids in Colorado (ages 12 to 17) reportedly used marijuana at some point between 2014 and 2015. Incidentally, these numbers are a couple of points lower than the findings from the federal government’s previous report.
An analysis from the Washington Post indicates that teen marijuana use has been on the decline in Colorado and Washington since the two states became the first in the nation to bring down the scourge of prohibition. However, the decreases found in the figures, at the time, were not significant enough for pot proponents to throw mud in Uncle Sam’s eye.
But things have changed.
“Survey after survey is finding little change in rates of teen marijuana use despite big changes in marijuana laws around the nation,” Masson Tvert, spokesperson for the Marijuana Policy Project, told The Fresh Toast in a statement. “Colorado and Washington are dispelling the myth that regulating marijuana for adult use will somehow cause an increase in use among adolescents.”
Interestingly, the government’s latest report shows that teen marijuana use is actually down more in legal states than it is in jurisdictions still hell bent on enforcing a prohibitionary standard.
Earlier last week, the new Monitoring the Future study, which is a products of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, revealed that eighth, tenth and twelfth graders all across the nation are consuming no more marijuana these day, since the onset of legalization, than they were 20 years ago.
In fact, the survey found that 68.5 percent of high school seniors “disapprove” of pot smoking.
Of course, the results of this report completely baffled the brains of federal health officials.
“I don’t have an explanation,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told U.S. News. “This is somewhat surprising. We had predicted based on the changes in marijuana legalization, culture in the U.S. as well as decreasing perceptions among teenagers that marijuana was harmful that [accessibility and use] would go up. But it hasn’t gone up.”
Unfortunately, marijuana advocates do not have much faith in the herb’s opposing forces backing down when it comes to slinging nonsense in an effort to prevent other states from going fully legal.
“Legalization opponents will surely continue to make dire predictions about teens, so lawmakers and voters need to be informed about these government reports that invalidate them,” Tvert said.
It is important to point out that while the decrease in teen marijuana consumption has certainly not plummeted to sober-levels since states began to legalize, the fact that those numbers have remained rather stagnant throughout the years is enough in the arsenal to combat prohibitionist swill about legal weed being a detriment to children.
