According to national data from 2021, about 16 percent of high schoolers admitted to marijuana use within the past thirty days. Brandon Johnson
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Marijuana use among Colorado high-schoolers has decreased in recent years, and the decline is even more significant looking back over the last decade, according to data released by the state Department of Public Health and Environment.
The CDPHE’s Healthy Kids Colorado Survey has provided information about youth marijuana use in Colorado since 2013, the year after recreational marijuana was legalized in this state (and a year before recreational sales began). In the first year marijuana questions were included, 19.7 percent of Colorado’s high-schoolers admitted to marijuana use within the past thirty days. By 2023, that number had shrunk to 12.8 percent, according to the survey.
Released once every two years, the Healthy Kids Survey shows that high school marijuana use within the past thirty days saw an initial spike in 2015, when teens admitting to use within the past month totaled 21.2 percent. There has been a steady decline in that category since, according to the CDPHE, with the 2021 survey dropping to 13.3 percent.
According to national data in 2021 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, about 16 percent of high-schoolers admitted to marijuana use within the past thirty days.
"We are extremely pleased to see the rate of current cannabis use among Colorado high school students continues to decline and remains lower than the national average," Chuck Smith, board president of cannabis industry group Colorado Leads, says in a statement. "Significantly fewer high school students report cannabis is easy to get today compared to the years preceding legal adult sales, which suggests our system is working as intended with regard to preventing youth access. Colorado continues to be proof that regulating cannabis works,"
In Denver, the state’s largest city and its cannabis industry capital, 11.9 percent of high-schoolers admitted to marijuana use within the past month, which is lower than the statewide average but slightly up from 11 percent in 2021. According to the Denver Department of Excise & Licenses, which oversees the city’s marijuana policy office, a […]
Marijuana Use Among High-Schoolers Decreasing in Colorado, Lower Than National Average
