Thirty years into the transition to regulated cannabis markets, teen use and ease of access are at or near the lowest levels ever recorded. It’s prohibition — not legalization — that put kids most at risk.
This is an op-ed contribution from Adam J. Smith, Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project. The views expressed are his own.
Legend has it that 420’s association with cannabis began in 1971 with a small group of California high school students who used “420” as a code to meet after school, at 4:20 pm, to get high.
In 1971, cannabis was illegal everywhere and there were more than 400,000 cannabis arrests across the U.S. Despite that, those kids had no trouble buying weed. Over the next quarter century of zero tolerance policies and rising arrest rates, teens’ access only increased.
By 1996, when California became the first state to legalize cannabis for medical use, arrests surpassed 700,000 per year. That would rise to more than 870,000 before Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize adult-use markets in 2012.
Those millions of arrests, and convictions, and quite often incarcerations, and the cascading negative externalities that go with them, fell overwhelmingly — in every single state — on the young, the poor, and people of color.
Today, 24 states have legal adult-use cannabis markets, and those states have reduced arrests by an average of 84%, driving annual U.S. cannabis arrests down from nearly 900,000 to just over 200,000.
What they predicted vs. what happened
“Where marijuana is legal, young people are more likely to use it.”
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, opposing their state’s legalization initiative, Boston Globe, March 2016
“If you legalize marijuana, you’re gonna kill your kids.”
Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, 2021
In Massachusetts, teen cannabis use is down 25% since Baker and Walsh made those predictions.
They were wrong
Thirty years …
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Author: High Times Contributors / High Times
