Teen marijuana treatment on the decline in legal states

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New research continues to show that adolescent cannabis use doesn’t increase after legalization

Concerned citizens who argued against the legalization of marijuana were always worried that, if cannabis were made legal, therefore more readily available, drug treatment centers would be overflowing with teenagers suddenly out of control abusing marijuana.

What actually happened in states where cannabis was legalized for recreational use were “sharp declines in youth treatment admission rates for drug abuse.” Happily, studies are showing that “teen admission rates for cannabis misuse fell some 50% in the US from 2008-2017.”

Oddly enough, states which only allow the sale of medical marijuana do not show any marked decrease in teen treatment rates as per research recently published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent study which appeared in the CDC journal GIS Reports found that “Consistent with prior research on medical marijuana and adolescent marijuana use, medical legalization status does not appear to correspond to treatment admission trends. However, seven of the eight states with recreational legalization during the study period fall into the class with the steepest level of admissions decline.”

Deputy coordinator Dan Quigley of the National Marijuana Initiative confirmed that the use of cannabis by teens is falling both on a national level as well in states where it has been legalized. He commented, “For some reason the use rate among this age bracket is going down. We’re not 100% sure why it’s going down. It’s a good thing that it’s going down, but we don’t understand why.”

Another study recently published in the state of Colorado showed that youth cannabis consumption “has not significantly changed since the legalization of cannabis in the state back in 2012.”