Study: Medicinal marijuana doesn’t increase teen drug use

Even though pot use amongst teenagers is reportedly on the rise and is apparently eclipsing cigarettes in popularity, a new study declares that contrary to prohibitionists’ baseless fear-mongering, there’s no evidence to suggest that the legalization of medicinal marijuana in several states is the cause:

For the new study, economists at three universities analyzed data from the youth risk survey that were collected from 1993 to 2009, and compared those results with when medical marijuana laws were passed. Over the 16-year-period included for analysis, medical marijuana was legalized in 13 states, including Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Currently 17 states legalize medical marijuana.

Researchers specifically examined the relationship between legalization and marijuana use at school, whether the teen was offered drugs on school property, and alcohol and cocaine use. Their results provided no evidence that medical marijuana legalization led to increases in pot use at school, the likelihood of being offered drugs at school, or the use of other harmful substances. The researchers also looked closely at state surveys of youth risk behavior and didn't find such evidence.

To be sure, this study is hardly the definitive word on the matter, least of all as it hasn’t been peer-reviewed, though these findings have also been confirmed in previous research on the matter. But nonetheless, it should be quite telling to any rational mind that the only evidence regularly – if ever – presented for why marijuana is so bad that legalizing it, even just for medicinal use, would result in youths everywhere being caught in its leafy, life-destroying clutches consists solely of third-party anecdotes that are endlessly rehashed around the prohibitionist circle-jerk until they retain all the legitimacy of Reefer Madness.

(via Study Finds/@radleybalko)

Tags: marijuana • pot • National Youth Risk Behavior Survey • YBRS • Centers for Disease Control • CDC • Institute for the Study of Labor • teenagers