Newly published results of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey show a decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis.
As of 2023, 17 percent of high-school students reported using marijuana within the past month, according to the 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. That’s down from 23 percent in 2013.
The federal survey is conducted every two years and focuses on substance use, sexual behavior, mental health, experiences of violence, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors.
Though youth use rates have ticked up and down by a few percentage points from survey to survey within the 10-year timespan covered by the CDC report, the overall trend is that past-month use among high-school students has declined since 2013, the data show. The decline in teen cannabis use is contrary to the fears of legalization opponents. Notably, male students showed a more marked drop in marijuana use over the past decade, with rates falling from 25 percent in 2013 to 15 percent in 2023. Among female students over the same time period, rates decreased from 22 percent to 19 percent.
“There have been promising declines in high school students’ use of substances,” the report notes. “All substance use behaviors included in this report decreased during the years that trends were measured. Since 2013, the percentage of students who currently drank alcohol, currently used marijuana, or had ever used select illicit drugs decreased.”
The decline in teen cannabis use is contrary to the fears of legalization opponents who have continually warned that ending marijuana prohibition for adults would trigger large increases in youth consumption.
Yet past-month youth marijuana use rates fell across all surveyed racial groups during the past 10 years, the CDC data show. Over the most recent two-year period—from 2021 to 2023—high-school marijuana use rates rose slightly, from 16 percent to 17 percent among all surveyed students, though CDC reported the difference as “no change” in the new report.
Past-month alcohol use among surveyed teens remained more popular than past-month cannabis use, meanwhile, though it also fell from 2013 to […]
Teen Cannabis Use Has Fallen Amid Legalization, CDC Data Show
