Although cannabis use among the general adult population in the United States has increased in recent years, a new study suggests that legalization in different states has contributed to young people consuming less.
This study was recently published the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
“Laws for recreational cannabis is associated with the 8% decrease in the number of schoolchildren who claim to have used cannabis in the last 30 days and also, a 9% growth in the number they say they use at least 10 times in the last 10 days”
“To be clear, we did not find any element to determine that the use in adolescents was related to the legalization of medicinal use, however, we found elements to determine that teen use is declining due to recreational laws”, said to CNN Mark Anderson, associate professor and associate professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.
The research had data from about 1.4 million high school students in the United States and compared them with records from 1993 to 2017 of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual national Youth Risk Behavior Surveys.
The researchers analyzed personal reports on cannabis use surveys. Among them, young students who live in areas where there are laws for both medicinal or recreational use.
The researchers examined the responses before and after cannabis laws were implemented.
According to Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Palo Alto, California: “The new study contradicts some other statewide separate studies that suggest that cannabis use among young people has not changed after legalization.” .
One of them was carried out in Colorado (2018) where some type of increase was found in the young population.
“It is more difficult for young adolescents to obtain cannabis through unregulated sources because these are replaced by dispensaries licensed for adults,” he said.
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