Science & Health
Teen Marijuana Use Remains Lower Than Pre-Legalization Levels, Federally Funded Survey Finds
Fewer young people are using marijuana now as compared to 2012, when the first states moved to legalize cannabis, according to a federally funded study that was released on Monday.
The 2018 Monitoring the Future survey found that annual, monthly and daily marijuana use remained lower among the nation’s 8th, 10th and 12th grade students compared to pre-legalization levels. Teens’ perceived availability of cannabis continued to decline in 2018 as well.
“Once again, federal survey data has debunked the myth that rolling back marijuana prohibition will result in increased rates of use among teens,” Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, told Marijuana Moment. “It’s quite clear that our country does not need to arrest hundreds of thousands of adult marijuana consumers in order to prevent teens from using marijuana.”
At the same time, fewer adolescents are saying they perceive occasional or frequent cannabis use as harmful. Experts have long believed that lower perceptions of risk are correlated with more frequent use—but for marijuana at least, the data doesn’t seem to bear out those concerns.
“Rates of marijuana use by teens have been of great interest to researchers over the past decade, given major social and legislative shifts around the drug; it is now legal for adult recreational use in 10 states plus the District of Columbia, and it is available medicinally in many more,” reads a press release from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Fortunately, even as teens’ attitudes toward marijuana’s harms continue to relax, they are not showing corresponding increases in marijuana use.”
There was a slight uptick in self-reported marijuana consumption for 8th and 10th graders compared to last year, while rates of cannabis use among 12th grade students dipped since 2017.
While opponents of legalization have raised concerns that loosening cannabis laws will inevitably lead more young people to seek out marijuana, the survey data seems to reinforce the idea that regulated legal access for adults is more effective than blanket prohibition.
“The most significant public policy approach to reduce teen use of cannabis is to take it out of the hands of the illicit market and put it behind a counter where employees check IDs,” NORML Political Director Justin Strekal said. “This new report and public acknowledgment by NIDA only further solidifies our demand for an expeditious legalization in the remaining stubborn states with prohibition.”
The new study, commissioned by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan.
Generally speaking, rates of cannabis use among high school students have remained relatively steady in recent years, but there was a significant increase in vaping nicotine and also a bump in vaping marijuana compared to 2017. Last year, the first time researchers asked specifically about cannabis vaping, roughly 5 percent of 12th grade students reported vaping marijuana in the past 30 days; in 2018, 7.5 percent said the same.
That seems to reflect a broader trend of young people choosing to vape instead of smoke. Another finding from the survey is that adolescent cigarette smoking rates have continued to decline—a trend that’s been ongoing for the past two decades.
There has also been an increase in teens vaping marijuana. #MTF2018
— NIDAnews (@NIDAnews) December 17, 2018
“Vaping is making substantial inroads among adolescents, no matter the substance vaped,” Richard Miech, lead author of the study, said in a press release. “If we want to prevent youth from using drugs, including nicotine, vaping will warrant special attention in terms of policy, education campaigns, and prevention programs in the coming years.”
Here’s the raw data on adolescent marijuana use trends:
| 8th 2012 | 8th 2017 | 8th 2018 | 10th 2012 | 10th 2017 | 10th 2018 | 12th 2012 | 12th 2017 | 12th 2018 | |
| Lifetime Use | 15.2 | 13.5 | 13.9 | 33.8 | 30.7 | 32.6 | 45.2 | 45 | 43.6 |
| Annual Use | 11.4 | 10.1 | 10.5 | 28 | 25.5 | 27.5 | 36.4 | 37.1 | 35.9 |
| 30-day Use | 6.5 | 5.5 | 5.6 | 17 | 15.7 | 16.7 | 22.9 | 22.9 | 22.2 |
| Daily Use | 1.1 | 0.8 | 0.7 | 3.5 | 2.9 | 3.4 | 6.5 | 5.9 | 5.8 |
| Perceived Availability | 36.9 | 35.2 | 35 | 68.8 | 64.6 | 64.5 | 81.6 | 79.8 | 79.7 |
Numbers reported in percentages. Availability figures include those saying marijuana is fairly easy or very easy to get.
Multiple studies have come out in the past year that have indicated that legalization doesn’t drive young people to consume cannabis. That includes a meta-analysis of 55 studies that found the “passage of [medical marijuana laws] has not increased cannabis use among teenagers during the periods after their passage that has been studied to date.”
This story has been updated to include comment from the Marijuana Policy Project and NORML.
Youth Marijuana Use Isn’t Increasing After States Legalize, Meta-Analysis Of 55 Studies Concludes
Photo courtesy of Martin Alonso.
The first Senate marijuana bill of the new Congress focuses on increasing research on the medical benefits of cannabis for military veterans.
The legislation, introduced by Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) on Thursday, would direct the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to conduct clinical trials on the effectiveness of medical marijuana in the treatment of conditions common among military veterans.
While the new bill has the same title as a proposal the bipartisan duo filed during the last Congress, its language—which is not yet online but was obtained by Marijuana Moment—much more forcefully directs VA to begin researching medical cannabis than the earlier legislation did.
Whereas last year’s version simply said that the department “may conduct and support research relating to the efficacy and safety of forms of cannabis,” nothing in current federal law actually prevents it from doing so.
This latest version stipulates that the VA, which has been reluctant to engage in marijuana studies, “shall” begin conducting clinical trials on cannabis.
“The VA needs to listen to the growing number of veterans who have already found success in medicinal cannabis in easing their pain and other symptoms,” Tester, the ranking member on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a press release. “Our bill will make sure the VA takes proactive steps to explore medicinal cannabis as a safe and effective alternative to opioids for veterans suffering from injuries or illness received in the line of duty.”
The proposed double-blind randomized controlled clinical trials are meant to cover the potential therapeutic applications of marijuana for post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain.
In particular, the department would have to study areas such as medical marijuana’s effect on opioid, benzodiazepine and alcohol consumption, as well as inflammation, sleep quality, spasticity, agitation, quality of life, mood, anxiety, social functioning, suicidal ideation and frequency of nightmares or night terrors.
Marijuana reform advocates praised the new legislation’s more forceful language as compared to the prior bill.
“The more assertive language is great improvement to this commonsense research bill that could ultimately help veterans with debilitating conditions,” Michael Liszewski, principal of The Enact Group, a lobbying and consulting firm that focuses on cannabis issues, told Marijuana Moment.
“The Department of Veterans Affairs already has the ability to conduct this research and the previous language would have let the Department continue to drag its heels,” he said. “It’s sort of like the difference between a parent telling their child ‘maybe you should clean up your room’ versus ‘you will clean up your room, now.'”
Sullivan said that he’s heard from many veteran constituents who are interested in finding an alternative to prescription painkillers for their pain.
“Many of our nation’s veterans already use medicinal cannabis, and they deserve to have full knowledge of the potential benefits and side effects of this alternative therapy,” he said in a press release.
During the last Congress, the Senate version of the legislation garnered six cosponsors, while 55 representatives ultimately signed onto the House version. The bill became the first standalone piece of marijuana legislation to clear a congressional panel when the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee approved it in May.
Nonetheless, VA leadership remained reluctant about engaging in marijuana research.
“VA is committed to researching and developing effective ways to help Veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain conditions,” VA Secretary David Shulkin wrote in a letter to lawmakers last year. “However, federal law restricts VA’s ability to conduct research involving medical marijuana, or to refer veterans to such projects.”
That isn’t true.
Meanwhile, top officials in the Trump administration have talked about pressuring the VA to conduct studies on medical marijuana for veterans, emails revealed, but they expressed concerns about how the Justice Department would react.
Read the full text of the new Senate veterans medical cannabis bill below:
Senate Veterans Medical Mar… by on Scribd
Federal government officials openly acknowledged that cannabis’s restrictive federal classification inhibits progress on necessary medical and public health research during a workshop last month, according to presentation materials obtained by Marijuana Moment.
Representatives from various federal agencies—including the Food and Drug Administration, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)—convened for a December workshop meant to provide guidance on researching cannabis while the plant remains federally illegal. The workshop was explicitly not about “challenging or changing current federal laws, policies or regulations.”
But during at least two presentations, officials with NIDA and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) listed ways that marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug under federal law complicates research efforts.
NIDA’s director of the division of extramural research, Dr. Susan Weiss, included a slide in her presentation that laid out administrative and scientific “cannabis research barriers.” On the administrative level, that includes the “complex and lengthy registration process” required for researchers interested in studying the plant, the lack of alternative sources for research-grade marijuana and the ongoing Schedule I status of “non-intoxicating components of cannabis” such as CBD.
Via NCCIH.
Dr. Emmeline Edwards, the director of the division of extramural research for NCCIH, echoed some of those points in her presentation.
“Despite marijuana being ‘legal’ in some states, the federal government has not legalized cannabis and continues to enforce restrictive policies and regulations,” one slide states. Edwards also discussed marijuana’s Schedule I status and the limited supply of research-grade cannabis from NIDA, which does “not sufficiently reflect the variety of products used by consumers.”
Via NCCIH.
Outside researchers who were invited to speak at the event also pointed out that the process to study cannabis could be simplified if federal restrictions on the plant were loosened. Dr. Margaret Haney, a professor of neurobiology at the Columbia University Medical Center, included a recent quote about marijuana rescheduling from Surgeon General Jerome Adams in her presentation.
“Our scheduling system is functioning, but not as ideally as it could,” Adams said last month. “Things aren’t static. We have to continue to evolve.”
Via NCCIH.
(Adams later walked back his comments, however, and clarified that he is “not in favor of legalizing marijuana, of rescheduling it, but I do want to make sure we do research so that policy decisions are evidence-based.”)
Haney, during her presentation, said that one piece of federal cannabis reform legislation that was introduced last Congress—the Marijuana Effective Drug Studies (MEDS) Act—is “promising” for researchers and “a hot topic” that could be taken up in 2019. That bill would, among other things, expand sources for research-grade marijuana and require the DEA to register additional cannabis manufacturers and distributers.
All told, the materials reviewed from the federally hosted workshop revealed a surprising amount of candor from government officials about the roadblocks current policy place in front of research, and an intense level of interest in expanding studies into marijuana’s therapeutic potential as well as any public health impacts from state-level reform. And while speakers didn’t seem to directly violate the stated event rule against “challenging or changing” federal marijuana policy, the issues that prohibition present to researchers did not go unacknowledged.
At the same time, agencies like NCCIH have stepped up calls for research into cannabis, including one proposal to fund studies on how terpenes and cannabinoids other than THC affect pain.
Feds Call For Even More Marijuana Research After Hosting Cannabis Workshop
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
Science & Health
Most Medical Marijuana Patients Stop Or Reduce Pharmaceutical Use With Cannabis, Survey Finds
Medical marijuana patients generally have more faith in cannabis than the mainstream health care system—and that’s probably because they’ve found the plant more therapeutically effective compared to traditional pharmaceuticals—according to a new survey.
Researchers distributed about 400 surveys to medical cannabis patients at a pro-reform public event, inquiring about their usage and attitudes toward the U.S. health care system. The results were published this week in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
The participants reported using marijuana for various medical conditions, including chronic pain, muscle spasms, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of them said that cannabis represented an effective and relatively harmless alternative to pharmaceuticals that are conventionally prescribed for their respective conditions.
“In comparison to pharmaceutical drugs, medical cannabis users rated cannabis better on effectiveness, side effects, safety, addictiveness, availability, and cost,” the study found. “Due to the medical use of cannabis, 42 percent stopped taking a pharmaceutical drug and 38 percent used less of a pharmaceutical drug.”
The most common drugs that patients stopped or reduced using were opioid-based painkillers, non-opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines and anti-depressants.
Of course, given the fact that the respondents were participating in a pro-reform advocacy event when they completed the surveys, it could be argued that the results skew in favor of marijuana over pharmaceuticals.
Even so, the surveys reflect trends that have been identified in past studies: access to medical cannabis seems to lead a portion of patients to cut out or reduce their use of prescription medications, some of which can carry serious side effects.
“This study advances knowledge in the evidence-based approach to harm reduction and benefit promotion regarding medical cannabis,” the researchers wrote. “Given the growing use of cannabis for medical purposes and the widespread use for recreation purposes despite criminalization, the current public health framework focusing primarily on cannabis abstinence appears obsolete.”
“Those working in public health and medicine have an obligation to reduce harm and maximize benefits to the health of individuals and society, and thus serious consideration and scientific investigation of medical cannabis are needed,” the study concluded.
New Analysis Explores Relationship Between Medical Marijuana And Opioid Overdoses
Photo courtesy of Brian Shamblen.
