By Tom Angell

 

Support for legalizing marijuana is likely to keep increasing as today’s high school students become politically active, if a new federally-funded study is any indication.

Only 15 percent of U.S. 12th graders believe that marijuana use should be a crime, according to new 2015 Monitoring the Future data released this month. That’s the lowest portion of high school seniors who think cannabis should be criminalized since the annual survey began in 1975.

Diving deeper into students’ attitudes about marijuana regulation, the survey found that 42 percent of high school seniors think its use should be “entirely legal” and 27 percent think it “should be a minor violation like a parking ticket, but not a crime.”

Asked whether cannabis commerce should be legal if its use were no longer prohibited, 55 percent said sales to adults should be allowed after possession is decriminalized, with an additional nine percent saying that sales to anyone should be legal.

The substantial support for marijuana law reform among youth tracks with national polls finding that a growing majority of Americans supports legalization. Such surveys generally find that voters from older generations are much less likely to support legalization than are millennials or those in Generation X. As the older population dies off and is replaced by today’s students, overall voter support for legalization seems poised to skyrocket.

Even though teen support for legalization is growing over time, most Monitoring the Future respondents say that the end of prohibition wouldn’t make them any more likely to use marijuana. “Most 12th graders felt that they would be little affected personally by the legalization of either the sale or the use of marijuana,” the study’s authors wrote.

Fifty-three percent said they wouldn’t use marijuana even if it were legal, with an additional 14 percent saying they would use about as often as they already do. Nine percent said they’d consume cannabis more often and 13 percent said they’d try it for the first time if under legalization. One percent said the end of prohibition would cause them to use marijuana less than they currently do.

Beyond marijuana, young people are increasingly in support of broader drug policy reforms.

“In 2015 the proportion of 12th-grade students agreeing that drug use in private should be prohibited by law was at the lowest level ever recorded in the 40 years of the survey for the illicit drugs LSD, heroin, and amphetamines,” the study found. “Support for prohibition has been in decline for all these drugs since the beginning of the 1990s drug relapse. The decline has been weakest for heroin, which seems to have maintained its reputation as a very dangerous drug, and support for legal prohibitions against its use in private stood at 64% in 2015. Even so, support for prohibitions against heroin use are declining and fell 4.3 percentage points in 2015, a statistically significant decline.”

The survey also asked 8th, 10th and 12th graders how easily they could obtain marijuana if they tried, finding huge drops in availability even as more states enact legalization.

“While variability has been small over the course of the survey, perceived availability of marijuana is at or near historic lows in each grade. In 2015 in 8th grade it was 37% (a historic low), in 10th grade it was 65.6% (the second lowest level ever recorded), and in 12th grade it was at 79.5% (a historic low),” the study’s authors wrote.

While the researchers said the decline is “somewhat counter-intuitive, given the widespread adoption of medical marijuana laws and recent legalizing of recreational marijuana use for adults in several states,” the result is in line with what anti-prohibition activists have argued for years: Taking marijuana out of the black market and putting it into a legal, regulated system with age controls will help keep it away from kids.

The new data is a followup analysis of Monitoring the Future results published last December, which found that overall teen marijuana use levels are holding steady even as more states enact legalization.

A separate teen drug use survey released this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also showed that even teen use isn’t increasing, and is actually dipping slightly.

Support for legalizing marijuana is likely to keep increasing as today’s high school students become politically active, if a new federally-funded study is any indication.

Only 15 percent of U.S. 12th graders believe that marijuana use should be a crime, according to new 2015 Monitoring the Future data released this month. That’s the lowest portion of high school seniors who think cannabis should be criminalized since the annual survey began in 1975.

Diving deeper into students’ attitudes about marijuana regulation, the survey found that 42 percent of high school seniors think its use should be “entirely legal” and 27 percent think it “should be a minor violation like a parking ticket, but not a crime.”

Asked whether cannabis commerce should be legal if its use were no longer prohibited, 55 percent said sales to adults should be allowed after possession is decriminalized, with an additional nine percent saying that sales to anyone should be legal.

The substantial support for marijuana law reform among youth tracks with national polls finding that a growing majority of Americans supports legalization. Such surveys generally find that voters from older generations are much less likely to support legalization than are millennials or those in Generation X. As the older population dies off and is replaced by today’s students, overall voter support for legalization seems poised to skyrocket.

Even though teen support for legalization is growing over time, most Monitoring the Future respondents say that the end of prohibition wouldn’t make them any more likely to use marijuana. “Most 12th graders felt that they would be little affected personally by the legalization of either the sale or the use of marijuana,” the study’s authors wrote.

Fifty-three percent said they wouldn’t use marijuana even if it were legal, with an additional 14 percent saying they would use about as often as they already do. Nine percent said they’d consume cannabis more often and 13 percent said they’d try it for the first time if under legalization. One percent said the end of prohibition would cause them to use marijuana less than they currently do.

Beyond marijuana, young people are increasingly in support of broader drug policy reforms.

“In 2015 the proportion of 12th-grade students agreeing that drug use in private should be prohibited by law was at the lowest level ever recorded in the 40 years of the survey for the illicit drugs LSD, heroin, and amphetamines,” the study found. “Support for prohibition has been in decline for all these drugs since the beginning of the 1990s drug relapse. The decline has been weakest for heroin, which seems to have maintained its reputation as a very dangerous drug, and support for legal prohibitions against its use in private stood at 64% in 2015. Even so, support for prohibitions against heroin use are declining and fell 4.3 percentage points in 2015, a statistically significant decline.”

The survey also asked 8th, 10th and 12th graders how easily they could obtain marijuana if they tried, finding huge drops in availability even as more states enact legalization.

“While variability has been small over the course of the survey, perceived availability of marijuana is at or near historic lows in each grade. In 2015 in 8th grade it was 37% (a historic low), in 10th grade it was 65.6% (the second lowest level ever recorded), and in 12th grade it was at 79.5% (a historic low),” the study’s authors wrote.

While the researchers said the decline is “somewhat counter-intuitive, given the widespread adoption of medical marijuana laws and recent legalizing of recreational marijuana use for adults in several states,” the result is in line with what anti-prohibition activists have argued for years: Taking marijuana out of the black market and putting it into a legal, regulated system with age controls will help keep it away from kids.

The new data is a followup analysis of Monitoring the Future results published last December, which found that overall teen marijuana use levels are holding steady even as more states enact legalization.

A separate teen drug use survey released this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also showed that even teen use isn’t increasing, and is actually dipping slightly.