An analysis of risk behavior questionnaires among high school students showed that between 2011 and 2021, the proportion of adolescents reporting current marijuana use decreased from 23.1 percent to 15.8 percent. Furthermore, the proportion of those who first tried marijuana before age 13 also declined. The report was published in the journal Pediatric Reports.
Currently, 38 US states have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana, and 16 states also allow recreational use. Under federal law, marijuana is considered a prohibited substance, and research shows that it is one of the most commonly used illicit substances among US adolescents. Therefore, monitoring trends in marijuana use among US adolescents remains an important public health priority, given the growing number of states legalizing recreational marijuana.
To understand recent changes in marijuana use among adolescents, a team of researchers led by Panagiota Kitsantas of Florida Atlantic University analyzed 10 years of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Risk Behavior Survey (CDS) of high school students (grades 9 through 12). The survey tracks health behaviors among a large sample of U.S. adolescents that contribute to leading preventable causes of premature illness and death.
The study's total sample included 88,183 high school students from the United States and included data from 2011 to 2021. The analysis found that the percentage of adolescents who had ever used marijuana decreased significantly from 39.9 percent in 2011 to 27.8 percent in 2021 (p < 0.05). Similarly, the percentage of adolescents reporting current marijuana use decreased from 23.1 percent to 15.8 percent (p < 0.05). Over the same period, the percentage of adolescents who had tried marijuana before age 13 also decreased from 8.1 percent in 2011 to 4.9 percent in 2021 (p < 0.05). Marijuana use increased from 2011 to 2013, then declined from 2015 to 2017, peaking slightly in 2019, and then declined rapidly in 2021. Marijuana use declined across all racial and ethnic groups between 2011 and 2021. However, in 2021, a higher proportion of Black adolescents reported marijuana use (20.5 percent) compared to White (14.8 percent), Hispanic (16.7 percent), and Asian (5.1 percent) adolescents. Girls were also more likely to use marijuana in 2021 than boys. Despite the large sample size and representativeness of the study, the researchers acknowledge a significant limitation of their work. Self-reported data can be significantly biased by social desirability and biases related to specific responses. A cross-sectional analysis also limits the ability to establish causality between the observed trends and influencing factors. Furthermore, the study lacks detailed contextual information on marijuana use, such as frequency and potency, and does not account for differences in legalization across states, which could bias the results. We have previously reported that cannabis use during adolescence disrupts prefrontal cortex development.
