Teen Pot Smoking Declines Nationally, Study Finds

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One of the most popular arguments among marijuana-legalization critics is that greater cannabis accessibility for adults will lead to more use by teens. But a new study from the University of Michigan calls that assumption into question. Michigan researchers found that teen pot use actually declined this year despite legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington and liberalization of medical marijuana laws in many locations across the country.


Entitled “Monitoring the Future,” the report looks at much more than marijuana use among teens. The annual survey of 40,000-50,000 students in about 400 secondary schools in the U.S. also tackles topics such as alcohol, cigarettes (and e-cigarettes), narcotics and so-called synthetic marijuana. However, the cannabis results are particularly interesting. The section begins like so: “Marijuana use, after five years of increasing among teens, actually declined slightly in 2014, with use in the prior 12 months declining from 26 percent to 24 percent for the three grades combined.”
Denver Westword has the full breakdown of the report.

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