Marijuana Use Up among American Teenagers, other drug use down.

[Vanoi]

http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-teen...161202645.html

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

More than 60 percent of American high school seniors do not think regular marijuana use is harmful, a new survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health's Monitoring the Future project finds.



That figure is up from 55 percent in 2012 and considerably higher than rates from the past two decades.
The survey also found 6.5 percent of 12th-graders smoke marijuana daily, up from 6 percent in 2003 and 2.4 percent in 1993.
It also showed that marijuana use increases with age.
Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of the seniors say they smoked marijuana in the month before the survey, and just over 36 percent say they smoked it during the past year.
Among 10th-graders, 4 percent say they use marijuana daily, 18 percent within the past month and 30 percent in the past year.
More than 12 percent of eighth-graders say they used marijuana in the past year, the survey found.
By contrast, use of alcohol and cigarettes among teens continues to steadily decline.
"These increases in marijuana use over the past few years are a serious setback in our nation’s efforts to raise a healthy generation of young people,” Gil Kerlikowske, director of National Drug Control Policy, said in a statement.
Researchers say the results are also troubling because pot has gotten stronger over the years.
“This is not just an issue of increased daily use,” National Institute on Drug Abuse director Nora D. Volkow said in announcing the findings. “It is important to remember that over the past two decades, levels of THC — the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana — have gone up a great deal, from 3.75 percent in 1995 to an average of 15 percent in today’s marijuana cigarettes. Daily use today can have stronger effects on a developing teen brain than it did 10 or 20 years ago.”
Marijuana legalization advocates quickly called on the institute to study whether regulating marijuana like alcohol and cigarettes could produce similar reductions in use among teens.
"The results suggest that regulating alcohol and cigarettes is successfully reducing teen use, whereas marijuana prohibition has been unsuccessful," Mason Tvert, director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said in a statement. "At the very least, this data should inspire NIDA to examine the possibility that regulating marijuana like alcohol and cigarettes could be a more effective approach than the current system."
For anti-drug advocates, there was at least some good news: The survey showed decreases in abuse of pain relievers and synthetic drugs among teens.
Just 2.3 percent of seniors admitted they abuse Ritalin, while abuse of the pain reliever Vicodin (5.3 percent) was down more than 50 percent from 2003. The use of synthetic marijuana dropped to 7.9 percent among high school seniors from 11.3 percent last year.
And the use of bath salts is "at or under 1 percent in all three grades."
Abuse of Adderal, however, remains high, with 7.4 percent of seniors reporting taking it for nonmedical reasons in the past year.

Well it seems like trying to prohibit and ban the use of marijuana is not working, at least among American teenagers. I wasn't surprised the use of other drugs went down since the vast majority of American teenagers don't get into hard drugs like cocaine, heroin ect. Was surprised alcohol use went down.

However, it seems obvious and the article states it too that if we wanted to reduce the marijuana use among American teenagers that legally regulating it like alcohol and cigarettes that marijuana use will go down. I support that idea regardless of it reduced teenage marijuana use or not as its obvious this War on Drugs isn't working. I wonder how much money the government will spend this year combating marijuana use. I wonder how much law enforcement resources that could be better used else ware will go to combating this drug.

If anything this brings me hope that at least this generation of kids will try and reverse the horrible drug policy.

[Michele Bachmann]

I know people who thought Marijuana was 'harmless'. Now they're selling themselves on the street for five dollars worth of crack cocaine. Think it doesn't happen?http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfac...ug-abuses.html

[Ciciro]

I know people who thought Marijuana was 'harmless'. Now they're selling themselves on the street for five dollars worth of crack cocaine. Think it doesn't happen?http://www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfac...ug-abuses.html

I don't know if I can trust drug facts coming from a guy who lives in a state where one of its house members was arrested on drug charges. Did I mention he was a Republican?

[Vanoi]

There's bad effects if you smoke marijuana? tell me more. Then tell me why it should be banned while we still allow cigarettes and alcohol which have considerably worse effects.

[Michele Bachmann]

There's bad effects if you smoke marijuana? tell me more. Then tell me why it should be banned while we still allow cigarettes and alcohol which have considerably worse effects.

Honest, hard working businessmen make money through the sale of tobacco and alcohol. The only people who make money off marijuana are criminals.

[Vanoi]

Honest, hard working businessmen make money through the sale of tobacco and alcohol. The only people who make money off marijuana are criminals.

And if marijuana was decriminalized then couldn't hardworking honest businessmen make money off marijuana like they do the with tobacco and cigarettes? You didn't actually answer my post there.

[Ciciro]

Honest, hard working businessmen make money through the sale of tobacco and alcohol. The only people who make money off marijuana are criminals.

Too bad these business men care little about the affects alcohol and tabacco and only about lining their pockets. The only difference between them and the criminals is that ones a bit more rich and conservative than the other.

[Michele Bachmann]

Too bad these business men care little about the affects alcohol and tabacco and only about lining their pockets. The only difference between them and the criminals is that ones a bit more rich and conservative than the other.

These businessmen don't shoot people on the street and pay the majority of the countries taxes. They're model citizens.
I encourage all drug dealers to study business at Harvard. There you can learn how to deal with pesky rivals and government agents without violence.

[Ciciro]

These businessmen don't shoot people on the street and pay the majority of the countries taxes. They're model citizens.
I encourage all drug dealers to study business at Harvard. There you can learn how to deal with pesky rivals and government agents without violence.

So if I kill hundreds of people but pay taxes I'm a model citizen?

[O'Hea]

Honest, hard working businessmen make money through the sale of tobacco and alcohol. The only people who make money off marijuana are criminals.

Prohibition.

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

There's bad effects if you smoke marijuana? tell me more. Then tell me why it should be banned while we still allow cigarettes and alcohol which have considerably worse effects.

I agree with this.But some people who have never heard voices in their heads ever suddenly start after cannabis use.You just cant explain that.

[Roma_Victrix]

You just cant explain that.

Latent but newly enhanced schizophrenia?

[Sir Winston Churchill]

I am so sick of this, stop feeding the troll people.

[O'Hea]

JFK's right, it's been a whole page. Time to move on.

I, for one, am glad to see that people are moving away from more harmful drugs to one that isn't so bad. The fact that so many kids are smoking on a daily basis though... where are they even getting the money from? If they've got enough money to afford daily weed, they must have a job, and if they have a job, how do they have time to get high every day? They're slacking so hard that it's come full circle and become overachieving.

[Vanoi]

50$ will get you enough to last a week. Its only expensive if you don't buy in weight.


However, the amount of money that could be generated legally from legal pot businesses is big, and i would think states would see that as an incentive.

[Sir Winston Churchill]

Well they should see it so, I mean it's a huge economy boost just waiting to be tapped into. The first moment a pot business goes public I will be investing my entire savings and watch it triple in a matter of months.

I will never understand why people consider a drug that is less deadly and less damaging than nicotine and alcohol more diabolical than them. "It's a gateway drug", yeah, and somehow drinking isn't?

[Roma_Victrix]

I will never understand why people consider a drug that is less deadly and less damaging than nicotine and alcohol more diabolical than them.

Two words for you: Reefer Madness (1936).



That and the newspaper propaganda of William Randolph Hearst.

[John ''True Grit'' Wayne]

She had been mopping the floor with bleach earlier and when she was later eating a apple she believed I had poisoned her apple like Snow white witch with bleach.
Snow white for gods sake.Voices in her head telling her people were trying to kill her and she must kill 1st before they get her.I blame the cannabis.Some people cant handle it brah.
This girl was friend of my cousin.Turned me right of the herb her behaviour did.

[Himster]

I can see why. It's the non-catholic notion of having pleasure without guilt or serious repercussions. Alcohol and tobacco are good catholic drugs, they give a mediocre sense of pleasure and then punish you ten times over, very catholic. American psyche is very much not catholic: red-bull, xbox, marijuana all give immediate pleasure with little or no repercussions. It's especially this new generation, they don't think there's anything wrong with avoiding pain and suffering.

But some people who have never heard voices in their heads ever suddenly start after cannabis use

The chemical associated with auricular hallucination (the same chemical we naturally produce during orgasm) is what causes that. Cannabis addiction is the same as sex addiction in more ways than one.

[Roma_Victrix]

The chemical associated with auricular hallucination (the same chemical we naturally produce during orgasm) is what causes that. Cannabis addiction is the same as sex addiction in more ways than one.

No wonder people like to smoke a big fat joint after getting laid.