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. “Itâs 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 useâbut 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 teensâ attitudes toward marijuanaâs 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 declineâa 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
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Business
Legal Marijuana States See Reduced Workers’ Compensation Claims, New Study Finds

Legalizing marijuana for adult use is associated with an increase in workforce productivity and decrease in workplace injuries, according to a new study partly funded by the federal government.
In a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers looked at the impact of recreational cannabis legalization on workersâ compensation claims among older adults. They found declines in such filings “both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount” in states that have enacted the policy change.
Further, they identified “complementary declines in non-traumatic workplace injury rates and the incidence of work-limiting disabilities” in legal states.
These findings run counter to arguments commonly made by prohibitionists, who have claimed that legalizing marijuana would lead to lower productivity and more occupational hazards and associated costs to businesses. In fact, the study indicates that regulating cannabis sales for adults is a workplace benefit by enabling older employees (40-62 years old) to access an alternative treatment option.
“We offer evidence that the primary driver of these reductions [in workers’ compensation] is an improvement in work capacity, likely due to access to an additional form of pain management therapy,” the study, which received funding from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, states.
The implementation of adult-use legalization seems to “improve access to an additional channel for managing pain and other health conditions, suggesting potential benefits on populations at risk of workplace injuries,” it continues.
The study is based on an analysis of data on workers’ compensation benefit receipt and workers’ compensation income from
2010 to 2018 as reported in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey.
“Our results show a decline in workers’ compensation benefit propensity of 0.18 percentage points, which corresponds to a 20 percent reduction in any workers’ compensation income, after states legalize marijuana for recreational use. Similarly, we find that annual income received from workers’ compensation declines by $21.98 (or 20.5%) post-[recreational marijuana legalization]. These results are not driven by pre-existing trends, and falsification exercises suggest that observing estimates of this magnitude is statistically rare.”
Researchers said that they’ve found evidence that cannabis use increases post-legalization among the age cohort they studied, but no such spike in misuse. Further, they found a decline in post-legalization prescriptions for medications used to treat chronic pain, indicating that some people are using marijuana as a substitute for traditional painkillers.
“We hypothesize that access to marijuana through [recreational marijuana laws] increases its medical use and, in turn, allows better management of symptoms that impede work capacityâe.g., chronic pain, insomnia, mental health problems, nausea, and so forth,” the study says. “Chronic pain management is likely to be particularly important in our context as this is the health condition most commonly reported among medical marijuana users.”
Beyond decreasing workers’ compensation claims and costs, legalization also is a boon to the economy by adding jobs in legal states.
The cannabis industry added more than 77,000 jobs over the past yearâa 32 percent increase that makes the sector the fastest in job creation compared to any other American industry, according to a report released by the cannabis company Leafly last week.
Starting A Business? Study Finds Marijuana May HelpâAnd Hinder
Business
Starting A Business? Study Finds Marijuana May HelpâAnd Hinder

A new study out of Washington State University suggests cannabis may inspire entrepreneurs to come up with big, bold business ideasâbut could also lead them down a rabbit hole of wishful thinking.
Researchers found that entrepreneurs who were frequent marijuana consumers came up with business pitches that were more original but less feasible, according to a panel of experts who scored the ideas.
âBeyond their innate creative aptitude, entrepreneurs may attempt to enhance their creativity,â says the study, which will appear in the March 2021 issue of the Journal of Business Venturing. âDespite generating more original ideas, we found that cannabis usersâ ideas were less feasible.â
Also important variables, the study found, were an entrepreneurâs passion, which may heighten creativity at the expense of feasibility, as well as their past entrepreneurial experience, which tended to increase idea feasibility but rein in creativity.
The findings âprovide insight into the creative benefits and detriments associated with being a cannabis user,â the study says, âsuggesting that cannabis usersâespecially those who are passionate about exploring new venture ideas or those with relatively little entrepreneurial experienceâmay benefit from non-usersâ insights to develop the feasibility of their ideas.â
To test the effects of marijuana on business-idea generation, researchers had 254 entrepreneurs come up with âas many new venture ideas as possibleâ based on virtual realityâa prompt provided by researchers. Participants had three minutes to generate ideas, then selected the idea they believed to be their best. Two âexpert ratersâ then evaluated the chosen pitches for originality and feasibility.
Reachers say their findings support one of the study’s core hypotheses: that there are differences between how cannabis users and non-users arrive at business ideas. âCannabis users are more impulsive, disinhibited, and better at identifying relationships among seemingly disparate concepts,â the study proposes. âHowever, these differences and cannabis usersâ diminished executive functioning likely detracts from idea feasibility.â
Notably, the researchers did not ask participants to consume marijuana in the study setting itself. Rather, to compare cannabis-users to non-users, researchers split participants into two groups: those who had used marijuana less than five times in their lives and never in the past month (non-users) and those whoâd consumed more than five times in their life and at least twice in the past month (users).
âUnlike alcohol, where health organizations have established standards for heavy drinking,â the study notes, âscholars have yet to reach a consensus on what constitutes a cannabis user versus a non-user.â
Because the study was merely observational, it also cannot determine whether marijuana use was in fact the cause of the differences between the two groupsâ ideas. It may be that some other trait or traits explain both a personâs idea generation and their decision to consume cannabis.
The studyâs cannabis user group comprised 120 people, or 47.2 percent of all participants. Researchers attempted to control for certain other factors, such as gender, age, education and technological familiarity.
While the findings suggest that, overall, cannabis can both inspire originality and limit feasibility, the outcomes were influenced strongly by what researchers described as âentrepreneurial passion for inventingâ as well as their âentrepreneurial experience.â
âCannabis usersâ diminished idea feasibility compared to non-users was significant in those with low entrepreneurial experience,â the studyâs authors wrote, âbut not in those with high entrepreneurial experience.â
Similarly, âcannabis usersâ lower idea feasibility was signifiant at high entrepreneurial passion for inventing but not low entrepreneurial passion for inventing,â the study found.
âEntrepreneurial passion for inventing appears to play a role in channeling cannabis users toward idea originality but away from idea feasibility,â it says. âConversely, entrepreneurial experience appears to attenuate the positive relationship of being a cannabis user with idea originality and its negative relationship with idea feasibility.â
As the study itself acknowledges, many successful business leaders and visionaries have credited the inspirational powers of cannabis. Apple luminary Steve Jobs, for example, ânoted that his use of cannabis helped him feel ârelaxed and creative.ââ (Biographer Walter Isaacson also quoted Jobs as saying another drug, LSD, was âone of the most important things in my life. ⊠It reinforced my sense of what was importantâcreating great things instead of making money.â)
On the other hand, researchers argue that cannabis use can be a double-edged sword. âRegular cannabis use is associated with numerous detrimental effects, such as the potential for dependence and addiction, risk of motor vehicle accidents, mental and respiratory health problems, as well as memory and other cognitive impairments.â
Benjamin Warnick, assistant professor at Washington State Universityâs Carson School of Business and lead author of the study, said in a press release that the research is âthe first study we know of that looks at how any kind of drug use influences new business ideation,â adding that âthere is still much to explore.â
âClearly there are pros and cons to using cannabis that deserve to be investigated further,â Warnick said. âAs the wave of cannabis legalization continues across the country, we need to shed light on the actual effects of cannabis not only in entrepreneurship but in other areas of business as well.â
Best Music Playlists For Psychedelic Therapy Are Explored In New Johns Hopkins Study
Photo courtesy of the Drug Policy Alliance, Sonya Yruel
Science & Health
Areas With More Marijuana Dispensaries Have Fewer Opioid Deaths, New Study Finds

Increasing access to marijuana dispensaries is associated with a significant reduction in opioid-related deaths, according to a new study.
“Higher medical and recreational storefront dispensary counts are associated with reduced opioid related death rates, particularly deaths associated with synthetic opioids such as fentanyl,” the paper, published on Wednesday in the British Medical Association journal’s BMJ, concluded.
It’s a finding that “holds for both medical and recreational dispensaries,” the study says.
Researchers looked at opioid mortality and cannabis dispensary prevalence in 23 U.S.states from 2014 to 2018 and found that, overall, counties where the number of legal marijuana shops increased from one to two experienced a 17 percent reduction in opioid-related fatalities.
Increasing the dispensary count from two to three was linked to an additional 8.5 percent decrease in opioid deaths.
Further, the study found that this trend “appeared particularly strong for deaths associated with synthetic opioids other than methadone, with an estimated 21 percent reduction in mortality rates associated with an increase from one to two dispensaries.”
“If consumers use cannabis and opioids for pain management, increasing the supply of legal cannabis might have implications for fentanyl demand and opioid related mortality rates overall.”
“While the associations documented cannot be assumed to be causal, they suggest a potential association between increased prevalence of medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries and reduced opioid related mortality rates,” the researchers wrote. “This study highlights the importance of considering the complex supply side of related drug markets and how this shapes opioid use and misuse.”
This is far from the first piece of research to draw a connection between legal cannabis access and reduced harms from opioids. Multiple studies have found that marijuana effectively treats conditions like chronic pain for which opioids are regularly prescribed, and surveys show that many patients have substituted addictive painkillers with cannabis.
“Cannabis is generally thought to be a less addictive substance than opioids,” the new study says. “Cannabis can potentially be used medically for pain management and has considerable public support.”
“Given the alarming rise in the fentanyl based market in the US, and the increase in deaths involving fentanyl and its analogs in recent years, the question of how legal cannabis availability relates to opioid related deaths is particularly pressing.”
“Our findings suggest that increasing availability of legal cannabis (modeled through the presence of medical and recreational dispensary operations) is associated with a decrease in deaths associated with the T40.4 class of opioids, which include the highly potent synthetic opioid fentanyl,” it continues. “This finding is especially important because fentanyl related deaths have become the most common opioid related cause of death.”
Earlier this month, a separate study determined that medical cannabis use is associated with significant reductions in dependence on opioids and other prescription drugs, as well as an increase in quality of life.
These studies could also provide valuable context to a federal health agency in the U.S. that is conducting a review of studies to learn if marijuana and kratom could potentially treat chronic pain with fewer side effects than opioids.
Hawaii Could Legalize Psychedelic Mushroom Therapy Under New Senate Bill
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