A new, updated study published Monday in the JAMA Network Open found “little evidence” that adult and medical use cannabis legalization “encourage youth marijuana use.” The study, conducted by researchers from the Department of Agricultural Economics at Montana State University, comes at a time when America is approaching a tipping point on legalization for adult use, with 19 states and Washington D.C. have enacted such reforms. And today, 36 states allow for medical use of cannabis, with programs that vary in the scope of their restrictions. The authors updated previous research by expanding their dataset from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey to include 1993 through 2019. In this new study, they called into “question the generalizability of their results” from a previous study that looked at data only until 2017. California became the first state in the nation to legalize cannabis for medical use in 1996, with an extremely permissive law, which started a domino effect of reform across the country that has picked up speed over the years.
Nushin Rashidian, Cannabis Wire, 09/06/2021 20:00:00