More adults are using weed in the states that legalized, but teen use is flat

[greengummybear]

More adults are using weed in the states that legalized, but teen use is flat
By Christopher Ingraham December 30, 2014

It's Christmas for drug policy data nerds! In late December to little fanfare -- not so much as a tweet! -- the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration released state-level numbers from the most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).

The national-level data from this study, released back in September, showed that drug and alcohol use rates among all Americans is essentially flat, while teen use is actually trending downward. These figures were borne out by more recent 2014 numbers from the federal government's other major drug study, the Monitoring the Future survey.

The new state-level numbers paint a more nuanced picture of drug use in the U.S. I'm going to focus on marijuana for today's post, since that's where most of the action's happening at the policy level. The first big takeaway? Colorado and Washington -- the states voting to legalize weed in 2012 -- saw big spikes in their overall marijuana use rates in 2012 and 2013.

For the state-level numbers, SAMSHA combines two years of data to ensure an adequate sample size. So, for instance, 2013 on the chart above actually reflects 2012 AND 2013. I've highlighted Colorado and Washington, as well as the U.S. total. You can mouseover the other lines to see rates in the other states.

The first important thing to point out is that since these numbers only go through 2013, they only reflect the period when Washington and Colorado had legalized the possession of weed, but had not yet set up their fully taxed and regulated marijuana markets -- that didn't happen until this past year. So in this context, the spike in use is even more noteworthy than it would be otherwise -- we can probably expect rates to climb even higher when the data reflect the effects of a fully legal marketplace.

On the other hand, plenty of other states saw their use rates climb by significant amounts too. Maine. Georgia. Maryland. Missouri. So Colorado and Washington are by no means alone in seeing increased marijuana use.

It's also significant that despite dramatic warnings from the attorneys general of Oklahoma and Nebraska, pot use in those states is basically flat over this period -- so at least from these numbers it's premature to claim that Colorado's weed is flowing into those states at significant rates.

In fact, Nebraska and Oklahoma can boast some of the lowest marijuana use rates in the nation. Another Colorado neighbor, Kansas, has the country's lowest rate. I mapped the current state-level use rates below.

Here's another important datapoint: the spike in use in Colorado and Washington happened almost exclusively among the 26-and-older crowd: use among teens aged 12-17 edged upward a little bit in those states, but this change was not statistically significant.

So on some level, what's happening in Colorado and Washington is exactly what you'd expect, and probably hope for, if you're a legalization proponent: increased use among the adults who can legally do so, but little change in use rates among teens.

It's instructive to compare these numbers to Alaska's, where weed has been de-facto legalized for personal use for almost 40 years. In that state, adult marijuana use is among the highest in the nation. But teen use rates are completely unremarkable, mirroring what we see so far in Colorado and Washington.

Again: these numbers are preliminary, and don't tell us anything about the effects of the retail marijuana markets being put in place in various states. But they're important, because they represent the baseline against which the impact of state-level pot policy changes will be measured.

Overall, I'd expect to see a continued rise in adult use in states that legalize weed. A big part of this will probably be the novelty factor: people who were previously discouraged from using marijuana due to its legal status may be tempted to give it a whirl when they can simply walk down the street and buy some at the store.

But weed isn't for everyone (see: Dowd, Maureen). It's reasonable to expect that many, if not most, new users may simply try it once or twice and decide it's not their thing. This seems to be what happened in Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2000: use rates rose in the year or two after decriminalization, but have fallen since then. Marijuana legalization experiments in the U.S. may very well yield similar results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...e-states-that-legalized-but-teen-use-is-flat/

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

That last paragraph is what lets the air out of all the appeals to public menace and moral panic that are made against legalization. The brute fact is that marijuana is a drug that not everyone has the capability to enjoy. It has complex set of effects, which are a motley mix of pleasurable, unpleasant, and neutral. And for most people, even the effects that are decidedly pleasurable are not so orgasmically euphoric that they make the other effects easy to ignore. Most surveys I've seen have shown about half of American adults have used marijuana. But they also show that the vast majority of these have used it ten times or fewer. This indicates, even if you're being parsimonious with your conclusions, that the majority of those who've said yes to marijuana, have concluded fairly quickly that they have no ongoing use or place for it in their lives.

Moreover, I'm not sure any extensive cross-literature reviews have been done on this (yet), but the medical and epidemiological literature I've seen tends to indicate that frequent, regular marijuana use in the Western world tends to commence somewhere between age 15 & 25, be done somewhere between 25 and 35, and last 10y or less. Use patterns deviating from this are still relatively rare. What this says to me is that most users reach a stage in their life where regular, frequent marijuana use no longer suits them, and they cease or significantly curtail their use so as to accommodate their lives. Not vice versa.

As with anything intrinsically pleasurable, there will always be some people who find marijuana fun enough to do to excess, such that their quality of life, and that of others close to them, is adversely affected. But I have yet to see evidence that this relative risk is significantly higher than for other intrinsically pleasurable things that are comfortably legal, and rarely ever put on trial as threats to public health or safety. Some people find potato chips abusable, to the point of eating a bag a day and getting diabetes. But the "won't somebody please think of the children!" is muted by the fact that the vast majority of people can be trusted not to abuse potato chips like this. Some people will push the limits in highly dangerous sports, to the point where they are maimed or killed. But most don't, because they're able to strike a balance between thrill-seeking and concern for their future.

Of course teen use is flat, because legalization takes away some of the badass appeal. There's still some, as there is with tobacco and alcohol, because of the legal age limit thing. Frankly, I think this is a good thing. I always toked for the intrinsic pleasure of toking and the sensual enhancements the drug brings. I never got along too well with people who smoke it merely for its social cachet; I don't miss the thinning of this herd one bit as I've aged, and am happy my kids' generation will have less of it to deal with. It's a motivation for use (of a powerful drug worthy of respect!) that doesn't promote healthy or responsible patterns of use, and gives all tokers a bad reputation in the eyes of the majority-abstaining population.

 

[One Thousand Words]

The more important report is how legalised weed effects rates of mental illness and other health issues vs economic benifits from law enforcement savings and taxation. These are the issues that opponents campaigned with. Personally I believe those who don't find cannabis works for them will avoid using but it won't be another 5-10 yr until we can accurately measure this.