Charges of marijuana use amongst Colorado teenagers continued to say no in 2025—and youth are additionally reporting considerably decrease ranges of entry to hashish—in keeping with a biennial survey from state well being officers.
The findings from the Wholesome Children Colorado Survey (HKCS) appear to assist a longstanding argument from reform advocates who’ve maintained that regulating marijuana gross sales and imposing age-related restrictions is a simpler technique to forestall youth use in comparison with imposing felony prohibition on adults.
The Colorado Division of Public Well being and Surroundings (CDPHE), which oversees the survey, discovered that 9.7 % of highschool college students within the state reported past-30 day marijuana use—a significant discount in comparison with the 12.8 % utilization fee youth reported in 2023.
Notably, present teen marijuana use charges have declined 56 % lower since 2011, which was the yr earlier than Colorado voters authorised leisure legalization.
“Pattern evaluation exhibits vital decreases in marijuana use over the previous 10 years,” CDPHE stated.
Additionally, Colorado highschool college students are notably much less prone to have used hashish prior to now 30 days than the nationwide common of 17 %, in keeping with knowledge from the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) Youth Threat Conduct Survey.
The Colorado survey additionally requested center college college students about hashish use, and an analogous pattern was noticed final yr, with simply 1.5 % of these in grades 6-8 reporting past-30 day marijuana consumption. That’s down from 3 % in 2023 and 5.1 % in 2013.
Lifetime hashish utilization has additionally continued to fall amongst Colorado youth in grades 6-12, the HKCS discovered.
“We’re extraordinarily happy to see the speed of hashish use amongst teenagers in Colorado continues to say no and stays decrease than the nationwide common,” Chuck Smith, CEO of Colorado Leads, an alliance of hashish enterprise leaders, stated in a press launch. “Greater than a decade after legalization, Colorado continues to exhibit {that a} well-regulated hashish market can efficiently scale back underage entry and shield public well being.”
In line with the Colorado survey, 33.5 % of youth respondents stated they felt it will be “kind of straightforward or very straightforward to get marijuana in the event that they needed,” which marks a 39 % lower from 2013.
“Whereas these long-term developments are promising, we acknowledge the significance of remaining vigilant and persevering with to work alongside different stakeholders to maintain this progress,” Smith stated. “Colorado’s authorized hashish trade stays firmly dedicated to stopping youth entry, as evidenced by persistently excessive compliance charges for age verification and refusing gross sales to minors. Collectively, we’ll proceed constructing on the success of a regulatory framework that’s delivering the outcomes it was designed to realize.”
The Colorado knowledge provides to a rising physique of analysis demonstrating that, opposite to speaking factors from prohibitionists, legalizing and regulating hashish doesn’t result in elevated underage use or entry. Slightly, it persistently appears to have the alternative impact, as evidenced by the Colorado expertise.
Making a regulatory framework for hashish the place licensed retailers should examine IDs and implement different safety mechanisms to forestall illegal diversions appears to need to be a simpler coverage than prohibition, underneath which illicit suppliers’ merchandise are untested and the place age-gating isn’t a strictly enforced regulation.
“These findings are according to these from different adult-use authorized states, which present steep declines in marijuana use by younger folks following the adoption of regulated, age-restricted markets,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano stated of the Colorado survey. “These outcomes purchased to reassure lawmakers that hashish entry may be legally regulated in a way that’s protected, efficient, and that doesn’t inadvertently influence younger folks’s habits.”
Exterior of Colorado, hashish consumption by center and highschool college students in Minnesota post-legalization can also be decrease now than it has ever been over the previous decade, in keeping with lately printed state knowledge.
A federally funded examine out of Canada that was launched earlier this yr additionally discovered that that youth marijuana use charges declined after the nation legalized hashish.
German officers equally launched a separate report on their nation’s expertise with legalizing marijuana nationwide that confirmed that fears from opponents about youth use, visitors security and extra have thus far proved largely unfounded.
Final yr, U.S. federal well being knowledge additionally indicated that whereas past-year marijuana use general has climbed in recent times, the rise has been “pushed by will increase…amongst adults 26 years or older.” As for youthful People, charges of each past-year use and hashish use dysfunction, against this, “remained secure amongst adolescents and younger adults between 2021 and 2024.”
Throughout the U.S., analysis means that marijuana use by younger folks has usually fallen in states that legalize the drug for adults.
A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Coverage Undertaking (MPP), for instance, discovered that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen hashish consumption down a median of 35 % within the earliest states to legalize.
One other U.S. examine reported a “vital lower” in youth marijuana use from 2011 to 2021—a interval through which greater than a dozen states legalized marijuana for adults—detailing decrease charges of each lifetime and past-month use by high-school college students nationwide.
A separate federal report concluded that hashish consumption amongst minors—outlined as folks 12 to twenty years of age—fell barely between 2022 and 2023.
Individually, a analysis letter printed by the Journal of the American Medical Affiliation (JAMA) in 2024 stated there’s no proof that states’ adoption of legal guidelines to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to a rise in youth use of hashish.
One other JAMA-published examine equally discovered that neither legalization nor the opening of retail shops led to will increase in youth hashish use.
In 2023, in the meantime, a U.S. well being official stated that teen marijuana use has not elevated “at the same time as state legalization has proliferated throughout the nation.”
Picture courtesy of Philip Steffan.