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.
Science & Health
College Students Who Use Marijuana Show Signs Of Greater Motivation Compared To Non-Users, Study Finds
Researchers are again challenging the idea that people who smoke marijuana lack motivation, with a recent study suggesting that the opposite may be true.
The study, published in the journal Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, tested the stereotype by recruiting 47 college students—25 frequent cannabis consumers and 22 non-users—and asking them to participate in a series of behavioral assessments known as Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task.
Past studies on the issue have “used divergent methodology and have not controlled for key confounding variables,” the researchers wrote. This new study sought to adjust for those variables and found that “past-month cannabis days and cannabis use disorder symptoms predicted the likelihood of selecting a high-effort trial.”
In other words, frequent marijuana consumers were actually more likely than the control group to select tasks that signal higher levels of motivation.
“The results provide preliminary evidence suggesting that college students who use cannabis are more likely to expend effort to obtain reward, even after controlling for the magnitude of the reward and the probability of reward receipt,” they wrote. “Thus, these results do not support the amotivational syndrome hypothesis.”
“Contrary to the amotivational syndrome hypothesis, college students using more cannabis were more likely to select the high-effort choice option, regardless of the reward magnitude, probability, and expected value of the overall reward. Although there was not a significant difference between cannabis use groups, there was a medium sized effect, lending consistent support for an association between cannabis use and greater high-effort choices.”
The study authors at the University of Memphis did caveat that the results don’t necessarily signal that frequent cannabis users employ “impairment-free goal-directed behavior,” however. And they said more studies with larger sample groups should be pursued.
On a related note, a study published in 2019 found that people who use marijuana report that consuming before or after exercising improves the experience and aids in recovery. And those who do use cannabis to elevate their workout tend to get a healthier amount of exercise.
A 2020 study of older Americans also found that cannabis consumers tended to do more formal exercise and engage in more physical activities than non-consumers during the course of a four-month trial.
Another study published last year similar concluded that adolescent use of cannabis “did not predict changes in motivation, which suggests that cannabis use may not lead to reductions in motivation over time.”
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is renewing its push to promote federally funded research into marijuana as more states enact reform—specifically expressing interest in studies on differing cannabis regulatory models that are in place across the country.
In a notice of interest published on Friday, the agency outlined the types of study proposals it hopes to fund and gave instructions to researchers on how to apply. NIDA said the guidance is informed by recommendations from a workgroup it set up to explore the issue in 2018.
The study solicitation is nearly identical to one NIDA put out in 2019, but that earlier notice expired last month. Evidently the agency is committed to seeing these research objectives through and has renewed them with the new filing.
NIDA’s notice is meant to “encourage grant applications on the effects of changing cannabis laws and policies in the US and globally on public health,” it said.
“Policies around of cannabis products (including whole plant cannabis and cannabis constituent compounds) in the United States (and globally) continue to evolve, and far outpace the knowledge needed to determine the public health impacts of these changes,” the notice says. “Growing numbers of states have loosened restrictions on cannabis, including those on sales and use, by passing medical marijuana laws or by making cannabis legal for adult recreational use, and in increasing numbers, states have done both.”
Examples of potential studies include developing standardized methods of measuring marijuana and its components, enhancing epidemiological research on cannabis use, determining “physical and mental health antecedents” of marijuana use, exploring the reasons people start to consume cannabis and continue to use it for therapeutic purposes and several other health-focused topics.
Interestingly, NIDA also again said it would be interested in funding research into “the heterogeneity of regulatory schemes (e.g. models for retail distribution of cannabis products) to understand which combinations or components minimize harm to public health.”
The reason that’s notable is because it’s another example of a federal agency effectively recognizing the inevitability of legalization and the need to start seriously thinking about regulatory models for cannabis.
NIDA emphasized that researchers must comply with the standard THC unit of five milligrams, which it developed and put into place last year, in order to conduct studies with human subjects.
Of course, even as NIDA encourages this kind of research, the head of the agency has repeatedly recognized that marijuana’s status as a Schedule I drug makes the application process onerous. NIDA Director Nora Volkow went so far as to say last year that even she is reluctant to conduct studies on Schedule I drugs like cannabis because of the “cumbersome” rules that scientists face.
NIDA submitted a separate report to Congress in October emphasizing that the Schedule I status of controlled substances such marijuana is preventing or otherwise discouraging research into their potential risks and benefits.
A National Cancer Institute research team similarly complained about the administrative barriers of marijuana research in a paper published late last year.
Several federal health agencies have worked to bolster cannabis science as the legalization movement spreads. In 2020, for example, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) highlighted funding opportunities for research into the therapeutic benefits of marijuana with an emphasis on pain management.
While the Schedule I restrictions remain challenging, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has taken steps to make substances like cannabis and psilocybin more available for research purposes by significantly increasing annual production quotas and ending the federal marijuana manufacturing monopoly.
Feeding donkeys fresh marijuana buds is inadvisable, according to a new study that looked at novel cases of cannabis toxicosis in two equine.
The study, published in the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation, investigated what happened after a jack and jenny (the terms for male and female donkeys, respectively) were fed a few grams of cannabis that was being legally grown for human consumption.
The donkeys’ symptoms sound a lot like what happens when a person takes an edible that’s too strong. They presented as lethargic and their hearts were beating faster than normal, for example. But while it took longer to come down from the high for the donkeys compared to humans, with symptoms lasting 44 hours in the younger jenny before she was taken to the hospital, the study says both “recovered uneventfully within 24 hours of peak effects.”
“Marijuana toxicosis is typically seen by companion animal veterinarians. However, with increased marijuana availability, there is a greater potential for toxicosis in other species,” the study authors wrote. To the scientists’ knowledge, this is the first study documenting cases of cannabis consumption in donkeys.
A positive outcome from the donkey highs was that scientists had a chance to experiment with testing procedures to confirm that the symptoms were due to exposure to cannabinoids. They used a “screening assay in collaboration with a veterinary diagnostic laboratory,” which the study authors said “may be useful when an equine practitioner suspects marijuana toxicosis in a patient.”
While they were able to determine those cannabinoid concentrations in the donkeys’ plasma, the researchers noted that more data is needed to figure out what dose of cannabis causes toxicosis in the species.
In terms of treating donkeys who ate too much marijuana, the study says practitioners could potentially use gastric lavage, administer activated charcoal or use laxatives.
“These adjunctive therapies are targeted at decreasing gastric absorption and facilitating excretion to limit the adverse clinical effects of cannabis,” they wrote. “There is no scientific evidence to support the benefit of these therapies for marijuana toxicosis in equine patients. However, activated charcoal and gastric lavage are effective means of supportive treatment for marijuana toxicosis in canine patients.”
The study doesn’t directly comment on the ethics of feeding cannabis to donkeys, but as a general rule, people are discouraged from intentionally intoxicating animals and should take precautions to avoid accidental ingestion.
Another study released last year found that, apparently, some canines are even getting intoxicated off marijuana by eating the feces of people who’ve consumed cannabis.
Separately, there is interest within the scientific community about the effects of non-intoxicating CBD in animals like dogs and horses.
Dogs with epilepsy experience considerably fewer seizures when treated with CBD oil, a study published in the journal Pet Behaviour Science in 2019 found.
The prior year, a separate study determined that CBD can alleviate the symptoms of osteoarthritis in dogs.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for its part, has repeatedly warned pet owners about using CBD to treat firework-related anxiety in pets around the July 4 holiday.
Oregon Lawmakers File Psilocybin Equity Bill As State Implements Legal Use Program
Photo courtesy of Flickr/Klearchos Kapoutsis.
