Teenagers and drug legalization

May it cause an increase in teen use?

No.

Teens use illegal drugs and drink illegally.

Making drugs legal for those 21 years old and older might actually curb the availability of the illegal stuff that's pervasive in every nook and cranny around.


Generally speaking though, I doubt anything will change. There won't be an increase, and there probably won't be a decrease.


POT should be legal for those 21 years old and above, and held to the same guidelines and laws as alcohol. Plain and simple.

Dragonfly said:

No.

Teens use illegal drugs and drink illegally.

Making drugs legal for those 21 years old and older might actually curb the availability of the illegal stuff that's pervasive in every nook and cranny around.


Generally speaking though, I doubt anything will change. There won't be an increase, and there probably won't be a decrease.


POT should be legal for those 21 years old and above, and held to the same guidelines and laws as alcohol. Plain and simple.

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That is absurd, of course it will increase. If it's easier and legal to buy for those over 21 it will certainly filter down to increased availability and use for those under 21.

Dragonfly said:

No.

Teens use illegal drugs and drink illegally.

Making drugs legal for those 21 years old and older might actually curb the availability of the illegal stuff that's pervasive in every nook and cranny around.


Generally speaking though, I doubt anything will change. There won't be an increase, and there probably won't be a decrease.


POT should be legal for those 21 years old and above, and held to the same guidelines and laws as alcohol. Plain and simple.

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Normalizing this wont have an effect on their lives ,on their brains in long term ?I try hard to agree with this

Rates of drug use may increase !

sigh...

Colorado teen marijuana use rate sees no increase after legalization

One out of every five Colorado teens say they have used marijuana in the last month, but that rate has not increased since pot was legalized in the state and is in line with the national average, according to a new report from the state Health Department.

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Teen marijuana use in Colorado found lower than national average | Reuters

Marijuana consumption by Colorado high school students has dipped slightly since the state first permitted recreational cannabis use by adults, a new survey showed on Monday, contrary to concerns that legalization would increase pot use by teens.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/21/colorado-survey-shows-what-marijuana-legalization-will-do-to-your-kids/

Rates of marijuana use among Colorado's teenagers are essentially unchanged in the years since the state's voters legalized marijuana in 2012, new survey data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment shows.

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/colorado-s-teen-marijuana-usage-dips-after-legalization/

Marijuana consumption by Colorado high school students has dipped slightly since the state first permitted recreational cannabis use by adults, a new survey showed on Monday, contrary to concerns that legalization would increase pot use by teens.
The biannual poll by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment also showed the percentage of high school students indulging in marijuana in Colorado was smaller than the national average among teens.

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Dragonfly said:

sigh...

Colorado teen marijuana use rate sees no increase after legalization



Teen marijuana use in Colorado found lower than national average | Reuters



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/21/colorado-survey-shows-what-marijuana-legalization-will-do-to-your-kids/



https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/colorado-s-teen-marijuana-usage-dips-after-legalization/

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Statistics can't save a life ,dragon

One more: Forbes Welcome

One of the biggest worries about legalized medical marijuana was that teenagers would smoke more pot, but it turns out those fears were wrong. A study just published in The Lancet Psychiatry showed no significant difference in adolescent marijuana use in the 21 states with medical marijuana laws.

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Medusa said:

Statistics can't save a life ,dragon

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:roll:

Pot doesn't kill people. Please get real here. Marijuana is FAR less dangerous than alcohol.

You'd better start a petition to abolish all alcohol and ban it from civilization completely or you're just an enormous hypocrite.

Dragonfly said:

sigh...

Colorado teen marijuana use rate sees no increase after legalization



Teen marijuana use in Colorado found lower than national average | Reuters



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/21/colorado-survey-shows-what-marijuana-legalization-will-do-to-your-kids/



https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/colorado-s-teen-marijuana-usage-dips-after-legalization/

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Do you think giving 4 different links to the same poll somehow makes your point greater?

If you will note the marijuana use did actually go up from 19% to 21% and it's hard to belive that teens will admit to doing it as the poll claims just 30% of Colorado teens are drinking. Maybe it's different in Texas but I know it was much high at my high school

Dragonfly said:

:roll:

Pot doesn't kill people. Please get real here. Marijuana is FAR less dangerous than alcohol.

You'd better start a petition to abolish all alcohol and ban it from civilization completely or you're just an enormous hypocrite.

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In social life which one do you have a chance to come across most ?

Medusa said:

Statistics can't save a life ,dragon

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teen driving, pregnancy, and drinking are FAR more a threat. "Think of the children" isn't going to work here and is frankly the last desperate tactic

i don't see evidence that pot being illegal deters anyone, of any age

chromium said:

teen driving, pregnancy, and drinking are FAR more a threat

i don't see evidence that pot being illegal deters anyone, of any age

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yes normalizing everything works well!!

Medusa said:

yes normalizing everything works well!!

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it's already normalized and there's no going back. People here smoke pot on their lawns in broad daylight even though it's illegal in this state (but not for much longer). The lies have been exposed and those terrorists at the DEA will be castrated and sent off to Colombia for more parties with drug kingpins before we give in to them!

I think it’s fairly obvious that it may. The impact is more conditional on how legalisation is implemented rather than its’ simple existence.

The quoted reports on statistics from places where marijuana has been legalised do suggest the actual outcome is unchanged. There aren’t any more teenagers using is but similar numbers still are, continuing to source it via illegal means by definition. I’m not convinced the adult pattern of use in these places will have change significantly either, because the actual practical consequences of the legal changes aren’t (yet) that significant. If there’s just a couple of small legal stores across the whole state, operating under heavy restrictions on things like advertising and obviously taking extreme care to avoid anything that might look bad, such as their products being obtained by teenagers, it’s never going to have a massive impact.

Until (unless) marijuana and other drugs are sold alongside tobacco and alcohol in normal stores (with the normal casual attitudes towards things like underage sales), I wouldn’t expect there to be any major shift but if that did happen, I would expect that shift to include changes in the pattern of use by teenagers one way or another.

Medusa said:

May it cause an increase in teen use?

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Voted "yes" only because it is possible (by the way the question was phrased) but the more likely answer is very little change either way.

Our reasoning behind Drug Legalization efforts is not to great a completely unregulated market but rather apply what we know from alcohol and tobacco. It can be regulated to some degree, it can be taxed to some degree, and we can apply law on dealing with the consequences of impaired driving (as an example.)

But the story here is dealing with the socioeconomic consequences of the so called "War on Drugs" to date. We have plenty of victim based crime on the books to contend with as it is today, we should be looking over how we apply victimless crimes to incarceration rates, duration of term in prison, and costs to upkeep this useless war.

The stats are alarming, so are the empirical results we can measure.

For instance but not limited to...

• The AMA will tell us there is little disparity between race on actual drug use, yet black men are arrested and incarcerated at rates up to 12x over white men.
• Between all levels of governance, Billions are spent every year on this useless war with little real impact to making this nation drug free (the original goal.)
• The so called "War on Drugs" has generated an organization criminal enterprise not seen since prohibition.
• Latin America is a blood bath of criminal activity and government corruption, all just to supply the demand our nation has for these Drugs.
• Actual treatment for Drug use ends up with more connections to getting arrested first than someone seeking alternatives, especially with government based aid.
• Social conservatism push back has broken the mechanisms to bettering someone by removing access to education, housing, and social safety net aid even if they are no longer using drugs.

We are clearly making a mistake continuing this path, there is a plausible alternative where all those funds going to the "War on Drugs" and the fact that we lead the planet in incarceration rates could go to dealing with education, treatment, betterment, and handling so many other things.

It could all be legal, and manageable... but hell no, we end up continuing this nonsense purely out of political lack of reason.

There's no evidence of increases in legalized areas. Places like Portugal and Spain have decreased use across the board ever since they decriminalized small possession. Reports coming out of the legal cannabis states in the U.S. seem to be similar.

I guess when something's not forbidden it loses its appeal. Either that or you no longer have shady people educating the young on what drugs are because the mainstream has better awareness.

Flip side of this question.

Would making small amounts of recreational/personal marijuana legal, prevent thousands of kids from getting felony drug arrest records that will adversely effect the rest of their lives?

And does that outweigh the possible, but not proven fear that more kids will smoke pot if it becomes legal?

By the way - I've had two children pass through the public school system within the last 6 years.

The ease with which any student can obtain marijuana is mind-blowing.

Making pot legal for adults won't change how easy kids can get it because right now, kids can get it far easier than they can get alcohol or cigarettes.

The only thing that might change with legalization is a kid who gets caught with it won't possibly alter the rest of his/her life is a drastically negative way.

Medusa said:

May it cause an increase in teen use?

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It will not alter teens attitudes towards pot in any way, the law is not respected even by state governments for the most part.

It will not change availability either. Pot is widely available and not hard to find, anywhere in the US.

The differences legalization would make:

conservation of law enforcement resources
tax revenue
quality control
health and safety regulations and awareness
small business and job opportunities, legal, stable, legitimate ones
elimination of a black market which has done surprisingly well throughout the "war on drugs"



It's already been socially acceptable for decades. In fact, legalization would also allow law enforcement to focus on the underage use problem specifically, possibly lowering teen usage in the long run.

Northern Light said:

There's no evidence of increases in legalized areas. Places like Portugal and Spain have decreased use across the board ever since they decriminalized small possession. Reports coming out of the legal cannabis states in the U.S. seem to be similar.

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There's a world of difference between legalisation and decriminalisation like Portugal implemented. Unfortunately, I don’t think the level of state-funded treatment programs involved in that system would be politically acceptable in the US (it didn’t even gain any traction in the UK).

Medusa said:

May it cause an increase in teen use?

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I don't care if it does or doesn't.Whether or not teens may use something shouldn't be reason to keep it illegal to make illegal.

Crovax said:

That is absurd, of course it will increase. If it's easier and legal to buy for those over 21 it will certainly filter down to increased availability and use for those under 21.

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Do teens have difficulty acquiring drugs now?

I was under the impression that they already had access to the pot etc. at their local high school.