A perennial question around legalizing cannabis for adults is whether it leads to more young people trying the drug. According to a new study by Michigan State University researchers, the answer so far is no—although the policy change does seem to lift the number of adults picking up marijuana for the first time.
“We offer a tentative conclusion of public health importance,” write the authors of the peer-reviewed research article, published late last month in the journal PLOS One. “Legalized cannabis retail sales might be followed by the increased occurrence of cannabis onsets for older adults, but not for underage persons who cannot buy cannabis products in a retail outlet.”
The new paper, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, claims to be the first-ever publication to examine incidence of use, or when people initially consume cannabis, as the result of adult-use legalization. Past studies have instead focused on prevalence, trying to measure legalization’s effects on how much cannabis people use or how often they use it.
“[T]here has been no policy influence on cannabis incidence in the underage adolescent population after adults have been allowed to buy cannabis in retail shops.”
To emphasize the importance between incidence
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