Teen Marijuana Use Continues To Drop As More States Legalize, Federally Funded Study Shows, Contradicting Opponents’ Claims

Even as more states have legalized marijuana, rates of teen use are on the decline. There was also a significant drop in perceptions by youth that cannabis is easy to access in 2024 despite the widening adult-use marketplace, according to the latest federally funded national survey published on Tuesday.

The Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey, which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), revealed an “unprecedented” trend, with rates of youth drug use overall going largely unchanged after falling to historic lows during the coronavirus pandemic, NIDA Director Nora Volkow said.

For cannabis reform advocates, the latest findings reinforce the argument that enacting regulated marijuana markets for adults—with safeguards in place such as ID checks at secure retailers—ultimately deters youth access.

To that point, cannabis use among 8th, 10th and 12 graders is now lower than before the first states started enacting adult-use legalization laws in 2012. There are currently 24 states where recreational marijuana is legal.

While past surveys have found that more adults are using cannabis amid the legalization movement, that hasn’t been the case with teens.

“Cannabis use remained stable for the younger grades, with 7.2 percent of eighth graders and 15.9 percent of 10th graders reporting cannabis use in the past 12 months,” NIDA said in a press release on Tuesday. “Cannabis use declined among 12th graders, with 25.8 percent reporting cannabis use in the past 12 months (compared to 29.0 percent in 2023).”

Also, among the 8th, 10th and 12th grade students involved in the MTF survey, there was a “stable trend” when it came to rates of vaping cannabis. And while vaping stabilized, reports of smoking as a method of using marijuana have declined.

NIDA and researchers at the University of Michigan, which conducted the survey, also expanded the questionnaire for 2024 to include 8th and 10th graders in a question about using delta-8 THC products.

It found that “2.9 percent of eighth graders and 7.9 percent of 10th graders reporting use within the past 12 months.” And for 12th graders who were previously asked about the cannabinoid, use of delta-8 THC “remained stable with 12.3 percent reporting use within the past 12 months.”

At a briefing on the survey, NIDA officials said the results reflect an encouraging trend that’s taken some experts by surprise. Volkow, for example, had largely attributed an earlier substantial 2020 to 2021 drop in illicit substance use among youth to the fact that the pandemic minimized social interactions for many young people. The expectation was that there’d be a resurgence amid renewed socialization—but that hasn’t happened.

“This trend in the reduction of substance use among teenagers is unprecedented,” Volkow said in response to the latest data. “We must continue to investigate factors that have contributed to this lowered risk of substance use to tailor interventions to support the continuation of this trend.”

The survey also found that, across the three grades, there was an increase in the perception that marijuana use carries a “great risk.”

During Tuesday’s briefing, NIDA’s chief epidemiological research, Marsha Lopez, noted the “significant decrease” in marijuana use among 12th graders—as well as “significant declines for all three grades for the reported use of CBD.”

Asked whether the cannabis use trends indicate that fears about potential increased consumption among youth that are frequently peddled by prohibitionists were ultimately unfounded, she told Marijuana Moment that while she wouldn’t necessarily “go that far” with the characterization, she said that “what we’re seeing in the data is that youth are not are not using more.”

“They’re reporting that they are using less. So that’s what the data are telling us,” Lopez said.

NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said in a press release reacting the the MTF survey said that “sensational claims that adult-use legalization laws are linked with greater marijuana use by teens are simply not backed by reliable data.”

“These findings ought to reassure lawmakers that cannabis access can be legally regulated in a manner that is safe, effective, and that does not inadvertently impact young people’s habits,” he said.

The findings track with past surveys that have investigated the relationship between jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana and youth cannabis use.

For example, a Canadian government report recently found that daily or near-daily use rates by both adults and youth have held steady over the last six years after the country enacted legalization.

Another U.S. study reported a “significant decrease” in youth marijuana use from 2011 to 2021—a period in which more than a dozen states legalized marijuana for adults—detailing lower rates of both lifetime and past-month use by high-school students nationwide.

The findings run contrary to claims from legalization opponents who said the policy change—first enacted in Colorado and Washington State in 2012—would lead to skyrocketing cannabis consumption by teens.

Data from CDC’s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, meanwhile, was released earlier this year. The updated numbers show a continued decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade.

Another federal report published this summer concluded that cannabis consumption among minors—defined as people 12 to 20 years of age—fell slightly between 2022 and 2023.

Separately, a research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in April said there’s no evidence that states’ adoption of laws to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to an increase in youth use of cannabis.

Another JAMA-published study earlier that month that similarly found that neither legalization nor the opening of retail stores led to increases in youth cannabis use.

In December, meanwhile, a U.S. health official said that teen marijuana use has not increased “even as state legalization has proliferated across the country.”

“There have been no substantial increases at all,” NIDA’s Lopez said. “In fact, they have not reported an increase in perceived availability either, which is kind of interesting.”

Another earlier analysis from CDC found that rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students have continued to drop amid the legalization movement.

A study of high school students in Massachusetts that was published last November found that youth in that state were no more likely to use marijuana after legalization, though more students perceived their parents as cannabis consumers after the policy change.

A separate NIDA-funded study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2022 also found that state-level cannabis legalization was not associated with increased youth use. The study demonstrated that “youth who spent more of their adolescence under legalization were no more or less likely to have used cannabis at age 15 years than adolescents who spent little or no time under legalization.”

Yet another 2022 study from Michigan State University researchers, published in the journal PLOS One, found that “cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults” in legal states, “but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.”

The trends were observed despite adult use of marijuana and certain psychedelics reaching “historic highs” in 2022, according to separate data released last year.

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