With the road to legalization slowly moving forward, some people are understandably worried about the idea of young people having more access to it. Specifically, they worry that legalization will lead to more marijuana use among young people. However, while this might be the case, a recent study found that this has led to a decrease in binge drinking among the young people.

Study

A recent report involved 1,550 young adults performing an online survey between March and November 2020. The highest percentage of respondents who used marijuana daily were males between the ages of 21 and 26. As a part of this survey, the respondents would answer questions regarding alcohol consumption, cannabis use, binge drinking, and other details.

Results

The researchers running the survey reported that while alcohol use dropped, 44 percent of college students reported using cannabis in the past year. This is a six percent increase from 2015. Additionally, daily marijuana users increased from five to eight percent over that same period. The researchers found a change in the number of college students reporting consuming alcohol in 2020. They found it dropped to 56 percent from 62 percent the previous year. They found that binge drinking decreased from 32 percent to 24 percent. Finally, they found that men outnumbered the women in the use of alcohol.

Discussion

The survey showed that the fear about the legalization of cannabis leading to the detriment of young people may be incorrect. In fact, recent studies beyond this one show that legalization of cannabis does cause many changes. For instance, there have been studies that show that legalization doesn’t lead to an increase in teen usage. On the military side of things, recent studies have shown that past cannabis use doesn’t affect the quality or quantity of the recruits.

Regardless, it is the hope of activists that these kinds of studies will continue to show the benefits of cannabis. Additionally, they hope it will push lawmakers more into allowing legalization.

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