Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/11/youth-cannabis-use-declined-in.html
Report says legalization associated with decline in youth cannabis use
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Further proof that prohibition doesn’t work. Like Daniel Okrent noted in “Last Call,” when prohibition of alcohol was rescinded, it actually became harder to drink. Same applies to weed
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Of course mom and dad are toking up now and we all know that things mom and dad do are not cool.
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That’ll teach those dam kids. Shaking fist at sky…
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Mom and dad? Try Grandma and Grandpa! Next up: weed ads that say “Hey kidz! This ain’t your grandma’s glaucoma cannabis!”
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Yup. My buddy’s 17 year old son thinks his dad and I are profoundly uncool and has no interest in smoking weed. We also demand he shares if he decides to smoke.
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No munchies for you kid!
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My youthful (and later) pothead daze had nothing to do with rebellion and/or alienation; it was only a desire to be high. But that was long, long ago. Do modern youth lack desire and opportunity to addle their brains? If pot usage declines, do opioids surge?
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“Oh yeah, weed. What my dad takes when his back hurts. What grandma takes for arthritis. What neighbor Jim took for his cancer pain and nausea. Old people medicine”
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I could call out at least 10 friends from my hometown who smoked pot simply because it was rebellious in their teen years.
Anecdotal, of course, but I know they’ve not been smokers since college, even with legalization in many states.
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Pssshhh… The first time I smoked weed with my childhood best friend’s parents was ~ 5 years after the first time I smoked their weed (their stash was our introduction to the wonderful world of weed. Conveniently, it was right underneath the penthouse stash we had discovered a few months earlier. We probably would’ve found the weed earlier, but, ya know, our hands were full at the time…) There’s worse things to do while high than listening to stoned old hippies recount the glory days, plus they were cool and didn’t tell my mom 
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This is one of my main concerns about cannabis legalization - what if it succeeds at reducing underage use of cannabis?
Because the kids are probably mostly not going to stop getting high; most will just get high on something easier to obtain. And of all the drugs out there that kids could get high on, pretty much all of them are more dangerous than weed.
Maybe shrooms or acid are safer(?) (except that a fair amount of the purported acid out there is actually 25-I-NBOMe, which is very much not safe).
But mostly what’s out there as an alternative is coke, opioids, meth, ketamine, GHB, molly (most of which are frequently laced with one another as well as things like PMA, fentanyl, and other stuff that basically nobody chooses to take) and sketchy-as-fuck synthetic cannabinoids.
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I wouldn’t worry too much. They were looking at a 9% drop in those who used pot every three days. It’s not the kind of drop that makes everyone go rushing for a poisonous alternative, it’s more the kind of drop that makes getting high on Saturday more special because you didn’t get to get high on Friday.
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It’s almost as if licensed retailers will be quickly out of business if they get caught selling to kids, where black-market dealers don’t really care, since they’re already operating outside the law.
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Always good to have some data.
Source: Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis, Published: November 01, 2010 in The Lancet
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My teenaged self would have been angry about this. But, my adult self, not so much.
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Do other legalizations result in reduced illegal drug use by any demographic? IIRC Portugal mitigated a heroin epidemic thusly. Is it time to open the gates for opioids, stimulants, all brain- and mood-altering stuff, for anyone of age? How can we have freedom of expression without freedom to think as we want with any dope we wish?
I think a lot of happy mutants here would agree that the war on drugs is very harmful when compared with decriminalization.
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That sounds good to me. IIRC, while cannabis isn’t especially bad for adults, you really shouldn’t use it while your brain’s still malleable. (The same goes with alcohol, of course, and I would guess any number of other mind-altering or intoxicating substances.)
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Oh, quite. The trick is to convince legislators that Tough On Crime isn’t a vote-getter and decriminalization isn’t political suicide. Good deeds don’t go unpunished, y’know.
