Adult-Use Legalization Associated with Decline in Youth Treatment Admissions New Study Shows

drug rehab legalization

For the longest time, we have been warned that “if you legalize cannabis for adults you’d be sending the wrong kind of message to the kids.” The logic goes that because of kids model what they see in adults if they were to see that “the law says it’s okay to smoke weed” that it would be an immediate open invitation to any kid to smoke weed.

Saying that aloud makes it sound dumb and that’s because that reasoning is dumb. Lawmakers are essentially saying that people are not capable of thinking for themselves. People don’t have a self-filtering mechanism that will allow them to “think or do” without government intervention.

Yes – a ludicrous idea of course. But this is the exact type of reasoning that has helped sustain cannabis prohibition for decades and now – finally a new study seems to be shedding some light on this false-narrative.

More Adults Smoke – Fewer Youth Admissions to Centers

Researchers began analyzing “youth admittance records” in states that have legalized cannabis and specifically with states, which has recreational legalized marijuana on the books. What they found that overall - states with legal adult recreational marijuana consumption had significantly decreased since cannabis was legalized. The greatest decline being in Washington and Colorado.

According to the authors;

"To our knowledge, this is the first study examining the effect of recreational legalization of marijuana in the US on adolescent treatment admissions for marijuana use. Our results indicate that RML in Colorado and Washington was not associated with an increase in treatment admissions. Rather, we observe a substantial decline in admissions rates across US states, with evidence suggesting a greater decline in Colorado/Washington following RML as compared to non-RML states. ... While we are encouraged that rates of new treatment admissions for marijuana use among adolescents exhibited a general decline in the states we examined, it is unclear whether this finding reflects trends in the prevalence of CUD (cannabis use disorder) or, rather, changes in treatment-seeking behaviors due to changing perceptions of risk and public attitudes towards marijuana use." [RML = Recreational Marijuana Laws]

What this could mean is that;

Fewer kids are trying pot
Fewer Kids are trying pot & not getting caught
The perceived risk of cannabis is lowered no longer warranting “Getting sent to a treatment center”
Other reasons

Irrespective of what the reason may be – the facts remain that there is a definitive reduction in youth admittance to treatment centers in states with recreational cannabis on the books – compared to those who have no cannabis laws on the books.

Some of the “Other Reasons” explored…

The reason why we have “other reasons” is because while the data suggests a decline in youth-admittance rates could be because of factors like;

It’s harder for the youth to buy good weed
The youth are generally less interested now that it’s legal

In the first point – it could possibly be that good weed is now simply harder to buy. Mexican shwag no longer appeals to the consumer market and as such – more people are trying to get their hands on primo.

However – primo isn’t exclusively a “legal cannabis” product and kids can find good weed in the black market. I don’t think that legal weed has really reduced “access” to kids because if you have enough determination in life – you can buy any illegal drug you want. Every major city sells them all.

So if restricted access isn’t the primary motivation behind the decline – it could very well be the “perceived value” of cannabis that is shifting in the minds of the youth.

Perhaps – now that cannabis is no longer a restricted behavior, the rebellious appeal is wearing off. The other thing could be that since the youth grow up immersed in mobile realities – their dopamine chasing days are limited to the confines of the screens resting in the palms of their hands.

Perhaps – weed simply isn’t that appealing to them anymore now that “The Olds” are smoking it. Perhaps this could be the same for every other drug and maybe, just maybe – with the proper educational approach we could coexist with mind-bending psychedelic substances within the greater population.

These of course are all speculation because the data is only telling us “one piece of the puzzle”. To be honest – I think the fact that cannabis is no longer seen as the “counter-culture activity of choice” but rather has gone “mainstream” – that kids are going to be looking for different ways to express their individuality from “the man”.

Maybe it’s DMT, maybe it’s psilocybin – but all of these drugs are also going mainstream. Perhaps – the kids of tomorrow will become puritan prudes because their folks are ganja smoking, mushroom eating psychonauts and the only way to rebel is to become “more conservative”. Wouldn’t that be something? Legalize all “sin” and get a purified society….or maybe we descend further into chaos as was NOT demonstrated by science.