UH OH: This Is What Happens to Teens When Marijuana Is Legalized

TheDailySheeple

According to studies, when they have more access to marijuana through legalization, teens actually don’t smoke more pot. So take that, everyone’s clueless grandma who said Colorado and Washington’s legalization would lead to a bunch of high-off-their-ass teens dropping out of school and becoming shiftless, lazy, no good punks.

Via Cheat Sheet:

One of the biggest fears? That legalizing marijuana, or any other morally dubious activity or substance, will lead to disaster for younger demographics. “Think of the children!” they might say.

…when it comes to marijuana, we can throw that conventional wisdom out the window.

Why? Because marijuana legalization is actually having the opposite effect on usage rates in the teenage population. Just take a look at this chart,produced by Quartz:

The data used to populate this graphic, taken from a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry Journal, shows marijuana legalization has actually led to a decline in teen use rates — and rather significant declines. A drop of 2% among 8th graders alone was witnessed, and in total, a 1.8% drop among all high schoolers.

These numbers are a bit of a surprise, no doubt, and the findings naturally lead to the big question of why teens are actually turning away from marijuana in the wake of legalization. It’s not an easy question to answer, and in fact, we may not really have a good idea of what’s causing the phenomenon.

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