It looks like one of people's worst fears about legal pot isn't coming true. Youth use is flat or down since legalization in CO and WA.
Posted by
Krusty (aka krustylu)
Mar 22 '17, 07:47
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But the data coming out of Washington and Colorado strongly suggest that those states’ legalization experiments, which began in earnest in 2014, are not causing any spike in use among teenagers. Teen marijuana use in Colorado decreased during 2014 and 2015, the most recent time period included in federal surveys. A separate survey run by the state showed rates of use among teenagers flat from 2013 to 2015, and down since 2011.
Even federal authorities, longtime skeptics of the merits of marijuana legalization, are starting to come around to the findings.
“We had predicted based on the changes in legalization, culture in the U.S. as well as decreasing perceptions among teenagers that marijuana was harmful [and] that [accessibility and use] would go up,” Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told U.S. News and World Report late last year. “But it hasn’t gone up.”
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