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>“In the U.S. the current landscape of marijuana legalization in adults adds a complex layer to the issues of adolescent marijuana use. As more states continue

>“In the U.S. the current landscape of marijuana legalization in adults adds a complex layer to the issues of adolescent marijuana use. As more states continue to legalize recreational marijuana, the accessibility and perceived normalcy of the drug may increase, particularly for adolescents who may view its legal status as an indication of safety or acceptability,” said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D. Interesting to read this in an article about how marijuana use has gone down in the time since legalization efforts have started to see success. It almost seems comically out of touch.

anovikov 2y ago
So you think that the research is wrong? I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.
- theboogieman 2y ago
  Add the fact that, if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, the people selling the marijuana will now be forced to only sell to people 21+. I’m not saying that this is the case as legal recreational marijuana sale prices in many legal states are high enough (due to taxes or artificial supply dampening due to restricting who can grow it and how much) to justify the existence of a black market, but if that was the case, I’d expect a drop off in youth usage.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    I think this overstates the interest in drugs among Zillenials and Gen Z. Most people in our cohort tend to follow a "you do you" philosophy that cuts both ways - if you choose to or choose not to partake in marijuana or alcohol, that's your choice. Stuff like "marijuana" or "alcohol" isn't viewed as cool or uncool, it's just viewed as a yet another consumable like coffee or sugar. Same way some people choose to cut down on coffee and others are coffee fiends, it's similar with booze and weed. Personally, I find that older generations have an unhealthily polarized view on weed and alcohol consumption - they are split between the "weed cures everything" and "weed is the devil's lettuce" camps. Heck, even this thread has tinges of judgement about how younger generations just don't care one way or the other about weed as if weed consumption is a core part of being young.
    - graypegg 2y ago
      I guess I'm a zillenial, born 1998. I distinctly remember a time in highschool where I saw vaping (the flavoured cartridge kind) shift from cool, to just some meaningless detail about someone. I totally think this shift has stuck. You're 100% right in comparing weed in this context to coffee, that exact same pattern happened to vaping too. It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic. I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?
      - alephnerd 2y ago
        > It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic. Exactly! > I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh? That's my opinion as well, but I'm part of the Zillenial cohort as well so I'm biased.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    >if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, It never is. The overhead from running a lawful business is way higher even before you start accounting for all the weed specific cost of compliance stuff.
    - standardUser 2y ago
      It varies from state to state, but legal prices are comparable to black market prices in a lot of places. And the selection available in legal markets is beyond compare.
    - mezzie2 2y ago
      Oh, it can be. I live in MI and weed is really, really cheap here. I don't smoke, but I partake in edibles (I have MS and nerve pain that meds can't do much about). I can get 2000mg of edibles for 40 bucks. And that's without price comparing: That's just going to the closest dispensary near my house. And lots of places do penny/free joints with a very low/no minimum purchase.
    - marssaxman 2y ago
      That's not the case here in Washington state: legal weed is significantly cheaper than the black-market ever was, unless you want some high-end specialty bud you most likely couldn't have gotten at all back then.
    - kredd 2y ago
      We've had legal marijuana since 2018 up here in Canada, and from the statistics it looks like the market has almost caught up. The closest comparison I can think of is piracy and beginning of streaming wars (like Spotify and Netflix). Sure piracy is free, but a significant chunk of people started subbing for the services because of the convenience. If you'll only save about $5 per purchase, but have to get cash, arrange everything and etc., that might be just enough friction for you to just go to one of the billion stores nearby.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      A conspicuous absence of black market for other herbal products such as tea and cilantro indicates that the edge of the black market over the lawful businesses isn't that great, if extant at all.
- skyyler 2y ago
  >So you think that the research is wrong? I think a poorly designed study can confirm pre-existing biases instead of actually test for anything. Stating that "research suggests" something doesn't actually mean much to me anymore. I'd love to know what research suggests that “marijuana legalization in adults can influence adolescent behavior through their perceptions of less risk as well as increased availability, both of which may impede efforts to reduce adolescent use.” The numbers this article is reporting seem to suggest the opposite.
  - StackRanker3000 2y ago
    I think the other person just mistook your point and thought that you were implying that marijuana use _hasn’t_ actually gone down.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I suspect the research is reasonably accurate, but you will always have someone voicing the position of safyism, caution, and whataboutism.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  I think there's a bit more at play. Let's contrast with buying hard drugs like meth. If you want to buy meth, you have to figure out how to get in contact with the sorts of people who'll be holding it. That means hanging out where they hang out and blending in to the point they trust you. By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem. In places where weed is legal, you can go into a store, buy some, try it, and if you decide it's not for you, just don't do it again. I don't use weed, but yesterday I walked into a liquor store to buy a stout beer I like. I didn't have to hang out and party with the clerk to get her to trust me enough to sell me my beer. I gave her some money, she handed me a shopping bag, and that's the end of it. That's what it's like buying weed from a dispensary now. TL;DR if you don't have to hang out with drug dealers to buy drugs, you might be less inclined to buy more stuff from drug dealers.
  - dfxm12 2y ago
    To add, dealers aren't referred to as "pushers" for no reason, either.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Good point. No one at a beer store has ever tried to talk me into buying more than I wanted, except maybe boredly pointing to some display and saying "we have X on sale if you want some."
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem. Shortcut: go the biggest hospital near you and find the fast food joint nearest the ER entrance. The drug users discharged after OD treatment will gather there and the dealers find then.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      You know, that's the kind of thing that seems perfectly obvious once you've pointed it out, but it wouldn't have occurred to me.
- pizza234 2y ago
  > When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk. I believe drugs (incl. alcohool) are a considerably more complex habits. Getting intoxicated have socially desirable outcomes (if one ignores the downsides), unrelated to unavailability. Some drugs like weed can also be part of rituals (e.g. "meeting and getting stoned").
- dec0dedab0de 2y ago
  I think it’s because there are less illegal weed dealers. Which means there are less people willing to sell to kids. Basically making it legal has made it harder for kids to get.
  - dartos 2y ago
    Vapes are edge and easy enough to get. Weed is popular among millennials, which are now the “cringe” generation so there’s that as well. Weed just isn’t as cool as it was before.
    - throaway89 2y ago
      Yup. Hasn't been cool in Canada since legalization, but a lot of milennials still cling to it
      - dingnuts 2y ago
        weird implication that millennials only did it originally out of a desire to be cool, and are still doing it "to be cool" some people just like it more than alcohol, wtf
        dartos 2y ago
        I like it more than alcohol, but as a teenager it was definitely just to be cool.
  - tmn 2y ago
    It is not hard at all to find a 21 year old to buy some legally and pass it on for a small tip.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tmn 2y ago
  Weed and alcohol remain forbidden due to age restrictions. But anecdotally, I grew up in the 90's and 00's. When weed was outright illegal and alcohol was as it currently is. There was plenty of desire to get drunk among minors. Weed had some but very little presence in my area. Today the weed presence is much more on par with alcohol among highschoolers (or so I'm told) where I'm from.
- smeej 2y ago
  My parents actually used this as a strategy when my sister and I were teens 20+ years ago. They casually offered that, as children of the '70s, there really weren't any drugs they hadn't tried, so if I was interested in any, I could just let them know and they'd get them and we could do them together. Made it seem as uncool as humanly possible, so I never tried. By the time our youngest brother was a teen, they'd gotten overconfident in their success and never made the offer to him. He eventually quit using, but it took 12 steps and a lot of time and effort my sister and I were spared!
  - m463 2y ago
    lol, same thing happened to a friend with cigarettes when they were a kid. Slightly different though - parents offered a cigarette during the time when they would say "Bleeeeech! this is horrible!" I think it headed off the time later when they wouldn't be able to react in front of their peers.
- rozap 2y ago
  Or it's legitimately harder to get. In high school we used to smoke weed because it was easy to get (friendly local neighborhood dealer didn't check ID) and very rarely drank alcohol because it was tricky to find.
- m463 2y ago
  I kind of think teenagers aren't into all the different boutique wines, and legal marijuana is sort of giving off the same "older people" vibe.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-declining/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d... Alcohol and other drug use, teen pregnancy, and sex in general have been declining in teens in the West for more than a decade.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - standardUser 2y ago
    > I'd rather deal with a teen pregnancy epidemic than the current situation of rising authoritarianism, isolationism, and reactionary turn that we are seeing from the youth of today. You mean the male youth of today.
    - NemoNobody 2y ago
      Ok, I understand your point but let's be real for a minute and just acknowledge that the worse situation that you can get. I'd rather hear about how what is happening with young men today was happening with young women than men - not that that would be better but it would be less dangerous. Young men that are disenfranchised from their society and have little to live for are a primary metric political scientists use to measure the stability of country. Historically speaking, once a society gets too many men like that, the society ends. This isn't a battle of the sexes and women do not win bc of what has happened with men.
      - standardUser 2y ago
        Historically speaking, we have never seen a society where women have more education, wealth and status than men. This is uncharted territory. Not that I don't fear the repercussions of having the bottom 50% of men desperate and disenfranchised. But those bottom 50% of men don't guarantee societal collapse because they're not then ones propping it up, women are. The question might be, what will women and higher status men do about the problems caused by the bottom half men?

anovikov 2y ago

So you think that the research is wrong? I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.

theboogieman 2y ago
Add the fact that, if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, the people selling the marijuana will now be forced to only sell to people 21+. I’m not saying that this is the case as legal recreational marijuana sale prices in many legal states are high enough (due to taxes or artificial supply dampening due to restricting who can grow it and how much) to justify the existence of a black market, but if that was the case, I’d expect a drop off in youth usage.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  I think this overstates the interest in drugs among Zillenials and Gen Z. Most people in our cohort tend to follow a "you do you" philosophy that cuts both ways - if you choose to or choose not to partake in marijuana or alcohol, that's your choice. Stuff like "marijuana" or "alcohol" isn't viewed as cool or uncool, it's just viewed as a yet another consumable like coffee or sugar. Same way some people choose to cut down on coffee and others are coffee fiends, it's similar with booze and weed. Personally, I find that older generations have an unhealthily polarized view on weed and alcohol consumption - they are split between the "weed cures everything" and "weed is the devil's lettuce" camps. Heck, even this thread has tinges of judgement about how younger generations just don't care one way or the other about weed as if weed consumption is a core part of being young.
  - graypegg 2y ago
    I guess I'm a zillenial, born 1998. I distinctly remember a time in highschool where I saw vaping (the flavoured cartridge kind) shift from cool, to just some meaningless detail about someone. I totally think this shift has stuck. You're 100% right in comparing weed in this context to coffee, that exact same pattern happened to vaping too. It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic. I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?
    - alephnerd 2y ago
      > It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic. Exactly! > I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh? That's my opinion as well, but I'm part of the Zillenial cohort as well so I'm biased.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  >if legal marijuana is priced low enough to make black market dealers less common, It never is. The overhead from running a lawful business is way higher even before you start accounting for all the weed specific cost of compliance stuff.
  - standardUser 2y ago
    It varies from state to state, but legal prices are comparable to black market prices in a lot of places. And the selection available in legal markets is beyond compare.
  - mezzie2 2y ago
    Oh, it can be. I live in MI and weed is really, really cheap here. I don't smoke, but I partake in edibles (I have MS and nerve pain that meds can't do much about). I can get 2000mg of edibles for 40 bucks. And that's without price comparing: That's just going to the closest dispensary near my house. And lots of places do penny/free joints with a very low/no minimum purchase.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    That's not the case here in Washington state: legal weed is significantly cheaper than the black-market ever was, unless you want some high-end specialty bud you most likely couldn't have gotten at all back then.
  - kredd 2y ago
    We've had legal marijuana since 2018 up here in Canada, and from the statistics it looks like the market has almost caught up. The closest comparison I can think of is piracy and beginning of streaming wars (like Spotify and Netflix). Sure piracy is free, but a significant chunk of people started subbing for the services because of the convenience. If you'll only save about $5 per purchase, but have to get cash, arrange everything and etc., that might be just enough friction for you to just go to one of the billion stores nearby.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    A conspicuous absence of black market for other herbal products such as tea and cilantro indicates that the edge of the black market over the lawful businesses isn't that great, if extant at all.
skyyler 2y ago
>So you think that the research is wrong? I think a poorly designed study can confirm pre-existing biases instead of actually test for anything. Stating that "research suggests" something doesn't actually mean much to me anymore. I'd love to know what research suggests that “marijuana legalization in adults can influence adolescent behavior through their perceptions of less risk as well as increased availability, both of which may impede efforts to reduce adolescent use.” The numbers this article is reporting seem to suggest the opposite.
- StackRanker3000 2y ago
  I think the other person just mistook your point and thought that you were implying that marijuana use _hasn’t_ actually gone down.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
I suspect the research is reasonably accurate, but you will always have someone voicing the position of safyism, caution, and whataboutism.
kstrauser 2y ago
I think there's a bit more at play. Let's contrast with buying hard drugs like meth. If you want to buy meth, you have to figure out how to get in contact with the sorts of people who'll be holding it. That means hanging out where they hang out and blending in to the point they trust you. By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem. In places where weed is legal, you can go into a store, buy some, try it, and if you decide it's not for you, just don't do it again. I don't use weed, but yesterday I walked into a liquor store to buy a stout beer I like. I didn't have to hang out and party with the clerk to get her to trust me enough to sell me my beer. I gave her some money, she handed me a shopping bag, and that's the end of it. That's what it's like buying weed from a dispensary now. TL;DR if you don't have to hang out with drug dealers to buy drugs, you might be less inclined to buy more stuff from drug dealers.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  To add, dealers aren't referred to as "pushers" for no reason, either.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Good point. No one at a beer store has ever tried to talk me into buying more than I wanted, except maybe boredly pointing to some display and saying "we have X on sale if you want some."
- throwup238 2y ago
  > By the time you've done all that, you've got some sunk costs invested in making connections with drug dealers. You're kind of bought into the whole ecosystem. Shortcut: go the biggest hospital near you and find the fast food joint nearest the ER entrance. The drug users discharged after OD treatment will gather there and the dealers find then.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    You know, that's the kind of thing that seems perfectly obvious once you've pointed it out, but it wouldn't have occurred to me.
pizza234 2y ago
> When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk. I believe drugs (incl. alcohool) are a considerably more complex habits. Getting intoxicated have socially desirable outcomes (if one ignores the downsides), unrelated to unavailability. Some drugs like weed can also be part of rituals (e.g. "meeting and getting stoned").
dec0dedab0de 2y ago
I think it’s because there are less illegal weed dealers. Which means there are less people willing to sell to kids. Basically making it legal has made it harder for kids to get.
- dartos 2y ago
  Vapes are edge and easy enough to get. Weed is popular among millennials, which are now the “cringe” generation so there’s that as well. Weed just isn’t as cool as it was before.
  - throaway89 2y ago
    Yup. Hasn't been cool in Canada since legalization, but a lot of milennials still cling to it
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      weird implication that millennials only did it originally out of a desire to be cool, and are still doing it "to be cool" some people just like it more than alcohol, wtf
      - dartos 2y ago
        I like it more than alcohol, but as a teenager it was definitely just to be cool.
- tmn 2y ago
  It is not hard at all to find a 21 year old to buy some legally and pass it on for a small tip.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tmn 2y ago
Weed and alcohol remain forbidden due to age restrictions. But anecdotally, I grew up in the 90's and 00's. When weed was outright illegal and alcohol was as it currently is. There was plenty of desire to get drunk among minors. Weed had some but very little presence in my area. Today the weed presence is much more on par with alcohol among highschoolers (or so I'm told) where I'm from.
smeej 2y ago
My parents actually used this as a strategy when my sister and I were teens 20+ years ago. They casually offered that, as children of the '70s, there really weren't any drugs they hadn't tried, so if I was interested in any, I could just let them know and they'd get them and we could do them together. Made it seem as uncool as humanly possible, so I never tried. By the time our youngest brother was a teen, they'd gotten overconfident in their success and never made the offer to him. He eventually quit using, but it took 12 steps and a lot of time and effort my sister and I were spared!
- m463 2y ago
  lol, same thing happened to a friend with cigarettes when they were a kid. Slightly different though - parents offered a cigarette during the time when they would say "Bleeeeech! this is horrible!" I think it headed off the time later when they wouldn't be able to react in front of their peers.
rozap 2y ago
Or it's legitimately harder to get. In high school we used to smoke weed because it was easy to get (friendly local neighborhood dealer didn't check ID) and very rarely drank alcohol because it was tricky to find.
m463 2y ago
I kind of think teenagers aren't into all the different boutique wines, and legal marijuana is sort of giving off the same "older people" vibe.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

This is not a new trend: https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-declining/ https://usafacts.org/articles/is-teen-drug-and-alcohol-use-d... Alcohol and other drug use, teen pregnancy, and sex in general have been declining in teens in the West for more than a decade.

Der_Einzige 2y ago
[flagged]
- standardUser 2y ago
  > I'd rather deal with a teen pregnancy epidemic than the current situation of rising authoritarianism, isolationism, and reactionary turn that we are seeing from the youth of today. You mean the male youth of today.
  - NemoNobody 2y ago
    Ok, I understand your point but let's be real for a minute and just acknowledge that the worse situation that you can get. I'd rather hear about how what is happening with young men today was happening with young women than men - not that that would be better but it would be less dangerous. Young men that are disenfranchised from their society and have little to live for are a primary metric political scientists use to measure the stability of country. Historically speaking, once a society gets too many men like that, the society ends. This isn't a battle of the sexes and women do not win bc of what has happened with men.
    - standardUser 2y ago
      Historically speaking, we have never seen a society where women have more education, wealth and status than men. This is uncharted territory. Not that I don't fear the repercussions of having the bottom 50% of men desperate and disenfranchised. But those bottom 50% of men don't guarantee societal collapse because they're not then ones propping it up, women are. The question might be, what will women and higher status men do about the problems caused by the bottom half men?