Even as more states have moved to legalize marijuana, rates of current and lifetime cannabis use among high school students have continued to drop, newly released federal data shows.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), published last week, found that teen use of all monitored substances—including marijuana, alcohol and prescription drugs—has “decreased linearly” over the past decade.
When it comes to cannabis, what’s especially notable is that the federal study shows high school student use was trending up from 2009-2013—before legal marijuana dispensaries started opening—but has been generally on the decline since then. The first state recreational legalization laws were approved by voters in 2012, with regulated retail sales beginning in 2014.
The latest data from the biennial survey shows that 15.8 percent of high school students reported using marijuana at least once in the past 30 days in 2021—down from 21.7 percent in 2009 and significantly lower than the record high of 23.4 percent in 2013.
Health officials have been encouraged by the trend, though they’ve pointed out that social isolation policies resulting from the coronavirus pandemic likely played a role in the extent to which substance misuse declined among
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