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No surprise that marijuana use among Colorado teens has not increased

A report released Monday by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says the state’s kids are not using marijuana more than before recreational pot was legalized. That should come as no surprise. Anyone who wanted it had no problem finding it before it was legal.

Colorado legalized recreational marijuana by way of Amendment 64, an initiated constitutional amendment approved by the voters in 2012. (Medical marijuana, which requires a prescription, was approved by a 2000 ballot measure.)

Besides making pot legal, Amendment 64 explicitly recognized the idea that it would be heavily taxed. A ballot measure codifying that passed in 2013.

Legal purchase and use of marijuana is restricted to those 21 and older, and legal pot merchants have strong incentives not to violate that rule. More to the point, though, marijuana has been widely available for a long time.

Alcohol often percolates down to teens via older friends or siblings. Marijuana does that too, but for most teens, it is easily found at school, in the neighborhood or from other friends. Legalization did not create those paths.

Nor did it make it easier for kids to get marijuana. In fact, one of the ideas behind legalizing it was that by doing so, the state would be setting up a safe market with stable prices and a product of predictable quality. Adults would, of course, prefer that to illicit dealings. A side effect, it was hoped, would be to help dry up demand for black-market pot.

There is some evidence that has happened. And the concern now is that taxing legal pot too much could sustain the black market. But members of the under-21 set still have to get marijuana illegally.

That is, if they want it. What the CDPHE survey found, however, is that about 80 percent of them apparently do not. A report from 2014 showed marijuana use among youth had decreased since legalization, while the just-released survey shows the 2014 numbers holding steady.

There are issues with legalized marijuana, including federal law, but its proponents were right: It sparked no epidemic of marijuana use.



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