Monitoring the Future Study Finds Youth Cannabis Use Continues to Decline

One of the major talking points we continue to hear from opponents of cannabis legalization is something along the lines of if you legalize cannabis more kids will consume it!

This runs contrary to much of the evidence coming out of legalized states over the last few years.

Now, the federally funded Monitoring the Future study has confirmed what we’ve been seeing with the Michigan News of the University of Michigan reporting “Adolescent drug use continued to drop in 2024, building on and extending the historically large decreases that occurred during the pandemic onset in 2020”.  

“I expected adolescent drug use would rebound at least partially after the large declines that took place during the pandemic onset in 2020, which were among the largest ever recorded,” said Richard Miech, team lead of the Monitoring the Future study at U-M’s Institute for Social Research.”

“Many experts in the field had anticipated that drug use would resurge as the pandemic receded and social distancing restrictions were lifted. As it turns out, the declines have not only lasted but have dropped further.”

While they report declining use ranged across alcohol, cannabis and nicotine vaping they report the following specific to cannabis use.

“For marijuana, decreases in use among students are a more recent development. In all three grades, the percentage who used marijuana in the past 12 months hovered within a tight window of just a few percentage points in the 20 years from 2000 to 2020. In 2021, the first year surveyed after the pandemic onset, substantial declines in marijuana use took place in all three grades. In 12th and 10th grades, these declines have since continued, and past 12-month use levels in 2024 were the lowest in the past three decades, at 26% and 16%, respectively. In eighth grade, the percentage in 2024 was 7%, the same for the past four years after dropping from a pre-pandemic level of 11% in 2020.”

Hopefully New Hampshire legislators will now stop making assertions to the contrary as we look to legalize responsible adult cannabis use in the Granite State.