Left News and Views

Ann Arbor, MI: Criminal policies that seek to prohibit the use and availability of cannabis have little influence on whether young people refrain from using marijuana, according to survey data published in the November issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Investigators at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research analyzed in-school surveys obtained from nationally representative cross-sectional samples of US high school seniors from 1977 to 2005.  Researchers reported that teens were unlikely to cite factors associated with the illegality of cannabis as motivating reasons not to use the drug.

“The reason for not using or stopping marijuana use cited by the fewest seniors over the 29 years of data … was availability (less than 10 percent of seniors),” the study found.

In addition, respondents seldom cited the cost of cannabis or “concern about getting arrested” as reasons to refrain from using it.

By contrast, “concern for psychological and physical damage, as well as not wanting to get high, were the most commonly cited reasons for quitting or abstaining from marijuana use,” investigators concluded.  Roughly half of those surveyed also cited concerns that their marijuana use might lead to the use of other illicit drugs.

NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said that the study’s findings “reaffirm that the federal government’s draconian cannabis policies do little, if anything, to shape young peoples’ decisions whether to try cannabis.”  He added: “Taxpayers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars arresting more than 20 million Americans on pot charges, yet there’s no evidence to indicate that this criminal prohibition discourages marijuana use.  There’s no doubt that these resources would be better spent educating America’s young people about the potential risks of cannabis – rather than arresting them.”

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500.  Full text of the study, “Saying no to marijuana: Why American youth report quitting or abstaining,” appears in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.