Lessons from tobacco and alcohol can avoid repeating past mistakes that led to high rates of underage drinking and, more recently, a youth nicotine vaping crisis. Research shows that there are a number of effective ways to protect youth from marijuana use and that states must adopt a legal and regulatory framework when liberalizing marijuana laws that protects minors to mitigate harms posed by legalization and commercialization. Ohio recently became the 24th state to legalize marijuana for adult nonmedical use, making such use of marijuana legal in nearly half the states.
To protect against these harms, policy makers should create a regulatory environment around marijuana legalization that prioritizes protecting minors. Youth protective provisions in tobacco and alcohol laws and regulations, such as increasing the minimum legal age of purchase or sale and restrictions on advertising and marketing, have had some success in reducing youth exposure to, access to, and use of these substances. Nonetheless, the tobacco and alcohol industries have exerted powerful influence to limit the effectiveness of provisions aimed at protecting minors, as reflected in data showing that tobacco and alcohol are the most commonly used substances among youth. Therefore, policy makers must also prioritize proper implementation and strong enforcement of youth protection provisions to ensure commercialization does not further exacerbate high rates of marijuana use among minors.
As legalization of marijuana becomes more widespread, there is an urgent need for states to protect adolescents and young adults who are under the legal age of purchase, possession, and use (that is, minors, generally those younger than age 21) from being exposed to, accessing, and using the drug. Available research about the effects of marijuana use on minors demonstrates that they are uniquely vulnerable to its risks, such as increased risk for developing marijuana use disorder, structural changes to the brain, psychosis, poor academic performance, cognitive deficits, depression, and suicidality.
Partnership to End Addiction, recently developed a set of evidence-based recommendations to help inform policy makers—and the public—about the most effective ways to protect youth in the context of state (and potentially federal) laws reforming the regulation of marijuana and other psychoactive addictive substances. These recommendations can be found in our report, Youth Protection Provisions within Marijuana Liberalization Laws: Evidence-Based Recommendations for Policymakers.
States have adopted many, but not all, of our recommended youth protection provisions. While this is a promising start, more must be done. Policy makers in states that already have a regulatory framework for legalized marijuana should work to fill in any gaps in youth protection provisions. In the states that have more recently legalized adult nonmedical use and are creating a market, policy makers should use evidence-based recommendations for youth protection, such as ours, to ensure they are prioritizing the health and safety of minors.
While legalization of marijuana is novel, legalization and commercialization of addictive substances are not. We have learned hard lessons from legalizing other addictive substances—most recently, e-cigarettes—without establishing a framework that prioritizes protecting youth. While the vaping industry heralded e-cigarettes as a cessation tool for adults who smoked cigarettes, regulations failed to adequately address at the outset the significant harm the products posed to minors who did not smoke, due to the high nicotine levels and other harmful contaminants in vaping products, the use of product design and flavors that strongly appeal to youth, marketing and advertising tactics that targeted youth, and easy accessibility online and in retail stores. Consequently, e-cigarette use among adolescents skyrocketed. Regulatory restrictions on e-cigarettes have been slow, reactive, and piecemeal. For example, many vaping products have been allowed to stay on the market for years while the Food and Drug Administration reviews the products’ impact on public health, allowing continued adolescent use. While limited flavor bans and litigation eliminated the availability of certain flavored products, many teens simply switched to flavored disposable products that were not covered by the limited flavor bans.
This experience is an important reminder that increasing availability and accessibility of addictive substances to the adult public should not come at the expense of the health and well-being of minors, who are already struggling with unprecedented mental health and substance use challenges.
