The Wall Street Journal keeps pairing real concerns about teen cannabis with a familiar implication: legalization made the problem worse. But national trend data, recent policy research (and even the DEA’s own youth-facing materials) still don’t show that legal adult markets drove a youth-use surge.
The Wall Street Journal has now run back-to-back pieces nudging readers toward the same conclusion: legal cannabis may be for adults on paper, but in practice it is making marijuana easier for teens to get, easier to hide and harder for schools to control. First came the March 4 school-panic piece about students vaping pot in bathrooms and even during class. Then came the March 14 health piece, which warned that even low-level teen cannabis use is linked to worse mental-health and academic outcomes.
The problem is not that the Journal found fake science. It didn’t. Teen cannabis use can be risky. High-THC products are real. Adolescents should not be using them. But that still does not prove legalization caused a rise in youth use, and it definitely does not justify treating legal adult markets as the obvious villain every time a teen-cannabis story needs one.
That’s the sleight of hand in this coverage. The Journal keeps blending together three separate claims and hoping readers won’t notice the seams.
Also read: Teens Didn’t Just Discover Weed. So Why Is The Wall St. Journal Acting Like They Did?
One claim is that cannabis can be harmful for teens. That is supported by a substantial body of research, and the March 14 article leans on exactly that. Another claim is that today’s commercial products can be far more potent than the flower most people think of when they picture old-school marijuana. Also true. But the third claim—the one doing the political work— …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
