Study Reveals That Cannabis Legalization Did Not Increase Consumption Among Youth

Curated and edited by Sechat, with information from Marijuana Moment

Youth cannabis consumption did not increase after states promoted legalization for medical or adult use, researchers concluded in a study published in a major scientific journal. The policy change, instead, has an overall impact on adolescent cannabis consumption that is "statistically indistinguishable from zero," they report.

In fact, it appears that establishing certain regulated cannabis models leads to lower use of the plant among adolescents under certain measures - a finding that directly conflicts with the anti-legalization arguments commonly made by prohibitionists.

The analysis, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined federal data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey 1993-2019, in 10 U.S. states, comparing both medical and adult use.

The researchers determined that the adoption of recreational cannabis legalization:

Was not associated with current marijuana use nor with frequent use.

Additionally, “the adoption of the medical cannabis law was associated with a 6% reduction in the odds of current use of the plant and a 7% reduction in the odds of frequent use.”

The study, which received partial funding through a federal grant from the National Institutes of Health, also found that cannabis consumption among youth decreased in states where recreational legalization had been in effect for two years or more.

"As more post-legalization data becomes available, researchers will be able to draw firmer conclusions about the relationship between regulation and adolescent cannabis use."

The authors of the study did not attempt to explain why young people may not be using marijuana more frequently in states that have legalized it, but it is a trend that does not surprise advocates who have long reasoned that allowing sales in a regulated environment would undermine the illicit market and minimize youth access.

“This study provides additional evidence that legalizing and regulating cannabis does not result in increased rates of use among adolescents,” said Matthew Schweich, deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project, to Marijuana Moment.

In fact, this suggests that cannabis legalization laws may be decreasing youth use.

Matthew Schweich

“This makes sense because legal businesses are required to strictly verify their customers' identities,” he said. “The unregulated market, which prohibitionists are effectively trying to sustain, lacks these protections.”

The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Nora Volkow, also admitted in a recent interview that legalization did not increase youth use, despite her previous fears.

Volkow said on the podcast of Drug Policy Alliance founder Ethan Nadelmann that she “expected adolescent marijuana use to increase” when states moved to legalize cannabis, but admitted that “overall, it did not increase.” It was reform advocates like Nadelmann who were “right” about the impact of policy change on youth, she acknowledged.

A federal report released in May also challenged the prohibitionist narrative that state-level cannabis legalization leads to increased consumption among youth.

The National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education also analyzed surveys of youth with high school students from 2009 to 2019 and concluded that there was "no measurable difference" in the percentage of students in grades 9 through 12 who reported using cannabis at least once in the last 30 days.

In a separate previous analysis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that cannabis consumption among high school students decreased during the peak years of state legal recreational cannabis legalization.

There was  “no change” in the current cannabis use rate  among high school students from 2009-2019, the survey found. However, when analyzed using a quadratic change model, lifetime drug use decreased during that period.

A report from the federally funded Monitoring the Future, released last year, found that cannabis consumption among adolescents “did not change significantly in any of the three classes for lifetime use, use in the last 12 months, use in the last 30 days, and daily use from 2019-2020.”

Another study released by Colorado officials last year showed that  youth cannabis consumption in the state “has not changed significantly since legalization”  in 2012, although consumption methods are diversifying.

A National Cannabis Initiative official from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy went even further last year, admitting that, for reasons that are not clear,  youth cannabis consumption “is decreasing” in Colorado  and in other legalized states and that it is “a good thing,” even though “we don’t understand why.”

Previous studies analyzing adolescent use rates after legalization found declines in consumption or a similar lack of evidence indicating that there was an increase.

In 2019, for example, a study took data from the state of Washington and determined that the decline in youth consumption of the plant could be explained by the replacement of the illicit market with regulations or by the “loss of novelty appeal among youth.” Another study last year  showed the decline of cannabis consumption among youth  in legalized states, but did not suggest possible explanations.