People Saying NO To Opiates And YES To Medical Cannabis

The Kids Are Alright: Study shows that more young adults are smoking more pot and using less opioids

New Study Shows More People Saying Yes to Medical Marijuana and Saying No to Opiates from CannabisNet on Vimeo.

A new study from the University of Michigan shows that teens and young adults are smoking more pot and less opioids as compared to their parents. The study, which took place over a span of four years and also analyzed tobacco and alcohol use, also said that compared to their parents or the baby boomer generation, are more accepting of cannabis.

“The proportion of Americans in their 40s and 50s who have experience with illicit drugs is quite shocking,” says Lloyd Johnston, who leads the study. “It's a great majority,” he adds.

The studies showed that more than 70% of people in their 50’s used illicit drugs back in their heyday, except pot. But when you factor marijuana into the picture, more than 85% of our moms and dads did drugs. Almost half of them were doing hard drugs in their college years compared to the 40% of young adults today.

One of the interesting revelations of the study is that young people seem to be more aware of the consequences of illegal drugs now. Plus cigarette use has never been lower among college kids as only 20.5% of participants admitting tobacco use in 2015 while 44.5% of the same age group did back in 2009.

“Maybe the most important of all is the decline in narcotic drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin and so forth,” adds Johnston. Opioid use among college kids declined over 5% from 2003 to 2015. “That's despite the fact that we know from the news that the use and misuse of narcotic drugs is a growing problem in the country,” he adds. He says that the reason for the change isn’t clear yet, but he thinks that it might have to do with the young kids becoming more wary of substances in general. “When someone sees a substance is dangerous, they tend to avoid it,” says Johnston, “And one of the things we've seen is an increased in perceived risk for a number of drugs."

However these changes didn’t apply when it came to cannabis use. According to Johnston, “For the most part, among both college and high school students their perception of how dangerous [cannabis] is has dropped like a rock.” Well, this is fantastic news. And guess what? This trend observed in this study is spot on if you consider the steadily increasing use of cannabis which has been going on for the past several decades now.

Johnston also attributes this to the policy discussions around cannabis legalization in general, which could lead to young adults thinking that it’s less dangerous than other drugs. “It's hard to see what else would account for such a dramatic change in perceived risk,” he says. Perhaps social media might have to do with it, as we know that kids today can’t be separated from their smart phones, Facebook, Instagram, and what have you. Studies show that there are hardly any negative messages that blast cannabis on social media. “The use of the Internet has certainly increased information exchange from objective sources and other people the same age,” Johnston adds. "Perhaps young people today are more informed about things."

According to Jennifer Whitehill, University of Michigan Amherst public health researcher, the federal government is still funding drug prevention programs aimed at the young ones. These drug awareness campaigns, such as the famous Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), weren’t established until the 80’s which could contribute to the decrease in illicit drug use among teens.

While these are all great news, it doesn’t mean that big pharma is going to stop trying to brainwash the population, nor does it mean that heroine will be eradicated from society. The last time that drug use went downhill was during the 80’s but quickly after that, Johnston says that both the media and government stopped paying attention to the drug problem. Since no one cared, this led to an increase in drug use in the 90’s.

Hopefully, this won’t mean what Johnston is thinking, that the decline in illicit drug use may actually be paving the way for more illegal drug use. It’s a double-edged sword; he says “As we're seeing a period of decline in illicit drugs, there's less attention to the issue, and young people grow up knowing less about why they shouldn't use them."

The World Says NO To Opiates And YES To Medical Cannabis