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Recreational marijuana legalization tied to decline in teens using pot, study says

Photo by Brett Levin via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Article by Jacqueline Howard via CNN

Marijuana use among young people in the United Statesoverall has climbed in recent years, but a new paper suggests that in states where recreational marijuana has been legalized, marijuana use among youth may actually be falling.

Laws that legalized recreational marijuana were associated with an 8% drop in the number of high schoolers who said they used marijuana in the last 30 days, and a 9% drop in the number who said they’d used at least 10 times in the last 30 days, according to the paper published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday.

“Just to be clear we found no effect on teen use following legalization for medical purposes, but evidence of a possible reduction in use following legalization for recreational purposes,” said Mark Anderson, an associate professor at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, who was first author of the paper.

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