by Dish Staff
Sullum relays the news:
A few months ago, I noted that the National Survey on Drug Use and Health showed no increase in marijuana use by teenagers after 2012, despite groundbreaking legalization measures approved by voters in Colorado and Washington that year. According to the latest results from the Monitoring the Future Study, released[yesterday], marijuana use by eighth-graders, 10th-graders, and 12th-graders fell this year, even as state-licensed pot shops opened in both of those states. It is too early to say whether diversion from adult buyers will increase cannabis consumption among teenagers in Colorado and Washington. But contrary to warnings from prohibitionists, legalization does not seem to be sending a message that encourages teenagers across the country to smoke pot.
German Lopez cautions that “experts say it’s far too early to know the full effects of legal pot sales”:
Mark Kleiman of UCLA and Beau Kilmer of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center cautioned on Monday that even Colorado’s first-in-the-country recreational marijuana industry is far from stable, with prices for recreational pot still higher than prices in the medical market.
“It’s going to be a while before things stabilize,” Kilmer said. Kleiman and Kilmer said they expect recreational prices to drop as more vendors and producers get into the industry, which could make excessive marijuana use more affordable and common.
How Christopher Ingraham frames the debate:
In the early 1990s the federal drug war was in full swing. But teen marijuana use spiked sharply during that period. It didn’t start falling until the late ’90s, when the first states began implementing medical marijuana laws.
This isn’t to say that repealing harsh marijuana laws will necessarily causeteen use to trend downward. But it does at the very least illustrate that it’s impossible to draw a straight line from “relaxing marijuana laws” to “increased teen use,” as [Congressman Andy] Harris and other prohibition enthusiasts do. And there are compelling arguments to be made that taking the marijuana trade off the black market, and letting government and law enforcement agencies, rather than criminals, control the marijuana market, will lead to better overall drug use outcomes among teens.
The Dish 