Despite continuous warnings from alarmists who say heavy marijuana use is “soaring among young people,” the most recent survey conducted by Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) found marijuana is less of a threat to the state’s youth than other substances. HKCS is supported by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and collects anonymous student information on multiple health topics.

Trends among high school students remain comparable to the national average and have not risen since the state voted to legalize recreational marijuana in 2014. In fact, the numbers have remained relatively stable since 2005, according to the report.

Four out of five high school students have not used marijuana in the last 30 days, a statistic that, according to the survey, “remains relatively unchanged since 2013.”

Even though more than half of Colorado’s high school students report that marijuana is easy to access, well below half have actually tried the drug.

Of the 17,000 middle and high school students from over 157 schools surveyed across the state, 21.2 percent reported that they currently use marijuana. With the national average at 21.7 percent, this survey corroborates prior evidence that legalization has not increased use among teens.

Alcohol remains the most used substance by minors across the state, a statistic that aligns with national trends. Thirty percent of Colorado’s youth report that they currently drink alcohol and 16 percent said they’ve gone on a binge in the last 30 days. Almost 60 percent say alcohol is relatively easy to acquire.

For more on the marijuana statistics in the survey, read Michael Robert’s article.

Last year, for example, Project SAM, an organization co-founded by former representative Patrick Kennedy and launched in Denver, claimed that national figures from the Department of Health and Human Services showed “heavy marijuana use” was “soaring among young people,” when the stats actually demonstrated that the overall number had dropped substantially. After being called out by the Washington Post, Project SAM withdrew its original press release on the topic.

That could explain why the 2015 Health Kids Colorado Survey, just issued by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (see it below), underlines “not” in the grabbiest weed-related finding in the report: “Four out of five Colorado high school students have not used marijuana in the last thirty days.”

Other findings are similar — yet plenty of people continue to believe that the 2012 passage of Amendment 64, which legalized limited recreational marijuana sales to adults in Colorado, has caused the sort of teen-toking explosion about which Project SAM has been concerned. And Mason Tvert, an A64 proponent who’s now the director of communication for the Marijuana Policy Project, thinks he knows why.

The co-owner of iBake Englewood, who goes by the name Thurlow Weed.

Earlier this month, we reported that Englewood had voted to prohibit marijuana clubs in the wake of controversy overiBake, a pot-consumption business with storefronts in the community and Adams County, where officials announced that they were looking at ways to shut down the one there after three years of operation and no reported problems.

Despite the Englewood ban, iBake’s co-owner, Thurlow Weed, expressed his hope that his venue in the community would be grandfathered in by the city council. But a memo authored by acting city attorney Dugan Comer in advance of a city council study session that’s scheduled for tonight outlines the rationale Englewood can use to shutter iBake permanently and suggests that any lawsuits over the action would be unsuccessful.

A recent study confirmed that marijuana-related arrests are up in Nebraska counties near the Colorado border.

Representatives of law-enforcement agencies in such areas frequently complain about the resources required to stop the flow of cannabis over the border.

However, the study’s authors can’t say definitively whether the increasing number of busts is due to more marijuana coming into the state or a greater emphasis on stopping it.

There are an infinite number of ways that a person can become a Schmuck of the Week.

And Jared Howard appears to have found a new twist on an old favorite: squealing.

The 23-year-old Texas college student was caught with a car full of marijuana while in Colorado — after which he seems to have gone many extra miles to make sure two fellow students from the Lone Star state shared his fate.

How so? After his arrest, Howard reportedly convinced Rafael Villegas-Perez, 20, and Stephen Martin-Emge, 23, to come to Colorado to help him move the weed — at which point they were busted, too.