The 9 Biggest Lies About Marijuana Legalization

6. Legalization Will Lead To Increased Adolescent Usage

One appeal to emotion prohibitionists use is asking, “what about the kids?”

The war against drugs incited fear among parents and adolescents by spreading anti-weed propaganda, usually without any scientific evidence to back claims.

Anti-pot ads of the 80’s and 90’s bombarded teens with ridiculous scare tactics like comparing the brain on drugs to an egg on a frying pan.

There is also the girl Sarah who is laid out on the couch with a flattened body “since she started smoking pot.”

Now that weed is legal in many states, opponents argue that marijuana would be too easily accessible for the fragile growing brains of the future generation. So have American teens been lighting up more since legalization?

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health compared the adolescent use of marijuana between 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, the year retail pot shops opened in Colorado.

The survey showed that Colorado teens aged 12 to 17 who have used marijuana in the past year dropped from 20.81 percent in 2013-2014 to 18.35% in 2014-2015.

A study by the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry published last year revealed that the number of adolescents using cannabis dropped.

In fact, problematic use was on a decline as states adopted legalization and decriminalization. It is possible that with legalization comes strict regulation with age and purchasing limitations.

Today there should be enough evidence to discredit the claim that legalization causes more teens to use pot. In fact, legalization supporters firmly believe that legalized marijuana will lead to a decrease in teen use.

Prohibitionists claim teen use will skyrocket if marijuana is legalized. However, this hasn’t been the case in states with legal pot.

In fact, the opposite has been happening. Teens have been using less pot in legal states according to one study.

The old “think of the children” trick is becoming harder to use as data becomes available from states with legalized marijuana.

A more recent study found marijuana use among teens was continuing to decline.

However, the claim that teen use will increase has been used to fight legalization by opponents.

In fact, Insys Therapeutics Inc, the makers of Fentanyl pills have been opposing marijuana legalization in Arizona “because it fails to protect the safety of Arizona’s citizens, and particularly its children.”

Many of these claims aren’t backed by scientific evidence. The ones that are seem to be disproved and discredited some time later.

The facts about cannabis are out, and the public shouldn’t be given inaccurate information.