Does Legalizing Cannabis Increase Adolescent Use? This Expert Found Mixed Results.

With weed these days, it’s a Willy Wonka world: chocolate bars, lollipops, exotic-flavored gummies — to say nothing of joints, vapes, drinks and the rest. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have now legalized the sale of marijuana for recreational use, prompting innovation, lowering prices and making the drug — more potent than ever — more widely available. The Biden administration this week recommended easing the federal regulations on cannabis.

What does all of this mean for adolescents?

Studies have demonstrated that marijuana use can harm the developing brain. Some new strains have been linked to psychosis. Many health experts have worried that relaxing the laws around cannabis will lead to more use of the drug among minors. But Rebekah Levine Coley, a developmental psychologist at Boston College, is less certain.

In April, she and colleagues published a study in JAMA that examined drug use patterns among 900,000 high school students from 2011 to 2021, using self-reported data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. They found that fewer minors reported having used cannabis in the previous month in states where the drug had been legalized. But they also found that in the 18 states that had both legalized cannabis and allowed retail sales of the drug, some adolescents who were users of the drug used it more frequently. The net effect was a flat or slight decline in cannabis use among adolescents.

Dr. Coley spoke to The New York Times about the study, and its implications for state and federal drug policy. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It seems sensible to assume that legalizing marijuana would lead to more use by young people.

Yes, common sense might argue that as cannabis becomes legalized, it will be more accessible. There will be fewer potential legal repercussions, hence availability would increase and use would increase.