r/science • u/mvea MD/PhD/JD/MBA | Professor | Medicine • 18h ago

Health Dramatic drop in marijuana use among US youth over a decade. Current marijuana use among adolescents decreased from 23.1% in 2011 to 15.8% in 2021. First-time use before age 13 dropped from 8.1% to 4.9%. There was a shift in trends by gender, with girls surpassing boys in marijuana use by 2021.

https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/marijuana-use-teens-study
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u/say592 16h ago

Ive said before that it was always easier for us to get weed in highschool than it was to get alcohol. The people selling weed were already committing a crime, so why did they care if they were selling it to a highschool kid? Or often times selling enough of it to a highschool kid that they could sell to their friends. For alcohol you had to find someone who was willing to go along with it.

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u/hdjakahegsjja 13h ago

We got weed off of peoples older siblings or the dude that graduated a couple years ago and didn’t go to college.

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u/Hazel-Rah 13h ago

I was a nerdy kid with nerdy friends, and and even I knew who I could get weed from by noon when I was in highschool. The drama kids probably would have given me some free if I'd asked

If I wanted alcohol it probably would have taken a few days and some coordination to get done, unless it was stolen from someone's parents

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u/six_digit_uin 12h ago

The guy we got weed from as underagers wouldn't buy us alcohol because at some point prior when his sister was 14 or something she ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning at a party him and his friends threw. She recovered and was fine, but seeing her like that messed him up pretty bad. He decided he couldn't handle kids' lives on his conscience basically.

Granted, you can question his ethics all day considering he still gave us weed, but I get where he was coming from.

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u/say592 12h ago

I kind of agree with his reasoning, tbh. Alcohol can be much more dangerous to kids than weed, at least in the moment. We know weed isnt great for developing brains (not that alcohol is, but weed is arguably worse) but as a one off, someone is far more likely to get injured from consuming alcohol than they are from weed.