WASHINGTON POST: Federal data released this week found there was no change in monthly marijuana use in nearly every U.S. state compared to last year. The only significant changes were in Rhode Island, Ohio and Hawaii, where monthly marijuana use fell year over year.
The latest state-level data, which asks participants if they used marijuana in the past month, is particularly useful, as it covers the first year of legal recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington. While the rate of monthly teen marijuana use did tick upward in those states, the change wasn’t statistically significant, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which released the data.
In Colorado, 12.6 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds used marijuana monthly in the combined years 2013 and 2014, up slightly from 11.2 percent in 2012-2013. (SAMHSA combines years for state-level estimates to increase the sample size.) Similarly, in Washington, the monthly teen marijuana use rate was 10.1 percent in 2013-2014, compared with 9.8 percent in 2012-2013… (more)
The value of perception of risk as an indicator of probable future use has been questioned more and more lately. This paragraph, from the end, is quite telling:
“Taken together, the three states that had a statistically significant decrease in past month adolescent marijuana did not have any change in adolescent’s rate of perception of great risk from smoking marijuana once a month (Figure 3; Table S3); these states are Hawaii, Ohio, and Rhode Island.13 The 14 states that had a significant decrease in adolescent’s rate of perception of great risk from smoking marijuana once a month did not experience any significant change in the rate of past month adolescent marijuana use. In 34 states, there were no statistically significant changes in either adolescent past month marijuana use or in adolescent perception of great risk from smoking marijuana.”
The Monitoring The Future data, a new set of which has just been released, is showing the same thing. They’re also expressing the same concerns about perception of risk, which their survey shows has been declining, even though the MTF survey also shows that use among youth has remained stable for the past five years:
(Estimated Prevalence of and Attitudes Toward Marijuana Use Among Youth in the US, 2015) “Marijuana, the most widely used of the illicit drugs, did not show any significant change in annual prevalence this year in any of the three grades, nor in the three grades combined. After rising for several years, the annual prevalence of marijuana has more or less leveled out since about 2010.
“This year, 12 percent of 8th graders, 25 percent of 10th graders and 35 percent of 12th graders reported using marijuana at least once in the prior 12 months. Of more importance, perhaps, is their daily or near-daily marijuana use (defined as smoking marijuana on 20 or more occasions in the past 30 days). These rates stand at 1.1 percent, 3.0 percent and 6.0 percent in 8th, 10th and 12th grades, respectively.
“In other words, one in every 16 or 17 high school seniors is smoking marijuana daily or near daily. These rates have changed rather little since 2010, but are from three-to-six times higher than they were at their low point in 1991.
“‘The proportion of our young people smoking marijuana this frequently remains a matter of concern,’ Johnston said.[2],[3]
“He notes that the percent of students who see regular marijuana use as carrying a great risk of harm has declined substantially since about 2005, and is still declining. Over the past 10 years, the percent seeing a great risk in regular marijuana use has fallen among 8th graders from 74 percent to 58 percent, among 10th graders from 66 percent to 43 percent and among 12thgraders from 58 percent to 32 percent.”
Source: Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Miech, R.A., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (December 16, 2015). “Use of ecstasy, heroin, synthetic marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes declined among US teens in 2015,” University of Michigan News Service: Ann Arbor, MI, p. 5.
– See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Drug_Usage#sthash.fSlkLsHG.dpuf
Risks of marijuana use were overblown in the past.
The argument could be made that the lies and hyperbole — the exaggeration of risks — which were the earmark of drug education in the “Just Say No era” backfired. That strategy both drew young people in (the “forbidden fruit” theory) and led young people to lie about their experimentation.
Some of us have argued for a long time that the way to get young people to not experiment with marijuana is to make marijuana boring. Though some in the industry are trying to fight it, that seems to be what’s happening.