Cannabis Legalization NOT Associated With Increased Teen Use

After several years of recreational cannabis legalization in several states, on the heels of up to over two decades of medical cannabis legalization in even more states, a recent study once again puts the lie to the prohibitionist claim that legalization would result in increased teen use of cannabis among other things in their supposed parade of horribles.  In fact, the study found that recreational legalization for adults was found to be correlated with a significant decrease in both overall and frequent teen use, while medical-only legalization was not significantly correlated with teen use at all either way.  Thus, the study completely lays waste to one of the prohibitionists' strongest arguments.  So consider that perennial zombie lie dead as a doornail for good.

That said, Twenty-One Debunked, in living up to our name, would be remiss if we did not note that so far, all states that have legalized weed for recreational use thus far have set the age limit at 21 (in contrast to Canada, where it is 18 or 19 depending on the province, or Uruguay and the Netherlands, where it is 18) and the study only looked at the USA.  But given that 1) medical legalization laws (which were not correlated with teen use) generally set the age limit at 18 in the absence of parental consent and often have loopholes, and 2) other countries that set lower age limits have thus far not reported a significant jump in teen use in recent years, and 3) America's experience thus far with changes in the drinking and tobacco smoking ages, one can conclude that an age limit of 18 for recreational use in the USA is unlikely to increase teen use relative to either prohibition or a 21 age limit.  Thus, no good reason to set it higher than 18.