Teens and Pot Still a Potent Mix

Our kids, for the most part, are on a healthier track. Alcohol, marijuana, prescription medications, and illicit substance use declined among U.S. teens again in 2016, continuing a long-term trend, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Institutes of Health.

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But there is still one big and growing area of concern: The research found that high school seniors were still using cannabis at nearly the same levels as in 2015, with 22.5 percent saying they had smoked or ingested the drug at least once within the past month and 6 percent reporting daily use.

Should we expect the numbers to be any different, given the perpetual push for legalization across much of this country?

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“Moreover, this study does not include kids who have dropped out of school — and are thus more likely to be using drugs than the study’s sample,” Dr. Kevin A. Sabet, a former White House drug policy adviser and the president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), said in a statement.

Students in states with lax marijuana laws are also much more likely to use marijuana in candy or edible form than students in other states. Among 12th-graders reporting marijuana use in the past year, 40.2 percent consumed marijuana in food in states with medical marijuana laws compared to 28.1 percent in states without such laws.

Related: ‘This is Not Your Father’s Marijuana’

“While drug, cigarette, and alcohol use are falling almost across the board, due to decades of work and millions of taxpayer dollars, kids are turning more and more to marijuana,” Jeffrey Zinsmeister, SAM’s executive vice president, said in a statement. “It’s unsurprising now that the marijuana industry, following in the footsteps of the tobacco industry, is pouring millions into marketing kid-friendly edible products like pot candy to maximize their profits.”

According to statements from the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and the American Psychiatric Association, marijuana use, especially among youth, should be avoided, and legalization efforts opposed, as SAM stated.

Use of marijuana at a young age has been shown more often than not to lead to addiction; mental health issues; a lower, irreversible IQ; lower grades; and a higher dropout rate — among other long-term health effects.