Marijuana Prohibition Doesn’t Reduce Teen Usage
A 1995 study found that 39% of Denver high school students reported past-month marijuana use, compared to 29% in the rest of Colorado and 25% nationally.1
The prohibition of marijuana does not reduce use among teens. On the contrary, it creates an unregulated black market for this product, which makes marijuana easier for youth to obtain than cigarettes or alcohol.2 Prohibition of marijuana exposes children to other drugs on the illicit drug market.
The Netherlands addresses the gateway problem, in which marijuana use leads to use of harder drugs, by implementing policies to decriminalize the use and sale of small amounts of marijuana. By moving marijuana sales into coffee shops and off the streets, the Netherlands drastically reduced the gateway effect and youth usage.3
“Coffee shops” appeared in Amsterdam in 1976 as a means of separating the market for marijuana from harder drugs, closing the dealers’ “gateway” from marijuana to cocaine and heroin. A 1999 study conducted by the Trimbos Institute found that 20% of Dutch teens aged 15-16 had tried marijuana, and less than one in 1,000 had tried heroin. The same year the European Drug Monitoring Centre found 40 % of teens the same age from Great Britain, which has a similar prohibition policy as the U.S., had tried cannabis, and one in 50 had used heroin.4
In 1994, only 0.3 % of 12- to 17-year-olds in Amsterdam had ever tried cocaine. The rate among American 12- to 17-year-olds was 1.7%, more than 5 times as prevalent.5
The gateway theory that marijuana use leads to use of harder drugs, is a result of prohibition policy rather than the physiological effect of marijuana. Simply put, when youth buy marijuana from black market dealers, the dealers can push harder drugs.
Notes
(1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Youth risk behavior surveillance-United States, 1995.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 45 (Surveillance Summary 4), September 1995.
(2) The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. 2002 CASA National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse VII: Teens, Parents and Siblings. August 2002.
(3) Rose, David. “Two Countries Took the Drug Test: Who Passed?.” The Observer; February 24, 2002. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,656121,00.html.
(4) Rose, David. “Two Countries Took the Drug Test: Who Passed?.” The Observer; February 24, 2002. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,656121,00.html.
(5) Licit and Illicit Drug Use in Amsterdam II, J. Sandwijk, et al.; Amsterdam, Netherlands: University of Amsterdam, 1995; and Preliminary Estimates from the 1995 National Survey on Drug Abuse, Advance Report Number 18, Substance Abuse and Mental Health ServicesAdministration; Washington, D.C.:U.S. Department of Healthand Human Services, 1996; p.92; both reports cited in Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence, L. Zimmer & J. Morgan; New York: The Lindesmith Center, 1997.