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UH OH: This Is What Happens to Teens When Marijuana Is Legalized
According to studies, when they have more access to marijuana through legalization, teens actually don’t smoke more pot. So take that, everyone’s clueless grandma who said Colorado and Washington’s legalization would lead to a bunch of high-off-their-ass teens dropping out of school and becoming shiftless, lazy, no good punks.
Via Cheat Sheet:
One of the biggest fears? That legalizing marijuana, or any other morally dubious activity or substance, will lead to disaster for younger demographics. “Think of the children!” they might say.
…when it comes to marijuana, we can throw that conventional wisdom out the window.
Why? Because marijuana legalization is actually having the opposite effect on usage rates in the teenage population. Just take a look at this chart, produced by Quartz:
The data used to populate this graphic, taken from a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry Journal, shows marijuana legalization has actually led to a decline in teen use rates — and rather significant declines. A drop of 2% among 8th graders alone was witnessed, and in total, a 1.8% drop among all high schoolers.
These numbers are a bit of a surprise, no doubt, and the findings naturally lead to the big question of why teens are actually turning away from marijuana in the wake of legalization. It’s not an easy question to answer, and in fact, we may not really have a good idea of what’s causing the phenomenon.
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Source: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/uh-oh-this-is-what-happens-to-teens-when-marijuana-is-legalized_082016
It is different for every individual. A useless, lazy person will be so before and after cannabis. A rude wanker is still a rude wanker, stoned or not. An under educated fool remains so even after cannabis. I know plenty of business people who smoke with NO effects compared to others who get smashed on alcohol and ruin everything, stoned or not.
Cannabis does not change personalities at all, it’s just psychiatry mumbo jumbo that creates many stereotypes because it is a subjective topic based on opinions not FACTS. Crazy folks are still crazy before and after drugs, some even crazier on pharmaceuticals! Let’s not scapegoat a plant with a load of benefits to justify some insane law made to benefit someone else’s pockets, and why on Earth would the government own the patent? It would put the pharmaceutical companies out of business, which would save millions of lives from “side effects”. Sorry I have NO faith in polls or manufactured numbers. I’ll stick with God/Truth.
These differences are negligible and not even significant or newsworthy. In essence there has been no change worth reporting about—I mean, come on; 2 measly percentage points among eighth graders, and actually an increase among tenth graders. This is about the dumbest article I’ve read in awhile.
This hardly qualifies as evidence that teens are “turning away from marijuana.”
I agree. However shouldn’t we be more alarmed that our government is willing to criminalize nearly a quarter of 12′th graders over a plant whose “harmful” effects are highly exaggerated and in many cases outright false?
Ofcourse. I totally agree with you.
Here are some other factors to consider about this “chart”. No information is provided as to how they gathered this data. In many cases, it comes from juvenile arrest records and school records of disciplinary action taken against teens who were caught with pot, and self-report surveys that are administered in schools and psychiatrist’s offices and used to screen for “at-risk” candidates for drug counseling and early intervention programs, so the answers aren’t necessarily going to be honest anyway. The wise ones who want to stay off the radar of school counselors and administrators will lie and say they don’t use drugs/marijuana and haven’t tried them. Others—who may have never even tried it—will say they have because they want attention, or think it makes them look cool and rebellious.