Generation is up in Smoke

Smoking pot is now more common among 10th graders in the U.S. than smoking cigarettes, and according to the latest federal government survey one out of every 15 high school students smokes marijuana on an almost daily basis. A quarter of the eighth, 10th and 12th graders surveyed reported using marijuana in the last year. Think this uptick has anything to do with our government’s increasingly lenient policies governing marijuana use? Well, of course it does! “The upward trend in teens’ abuse of marijuana corresponded to downward trends in their perception of risk,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which released the survey results. The nation’s drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, told The New York Times [NYT] that the increasing prevalence of medical marijuana was indeed a factor in the increase in non-medical marijuana use among teens. Here in Massachusetts, of course, the push is on to approve medicinal marijuana. And voters in 2008 approved the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of pot. Those initiatives have hardly struck fear in the hearts of young pot smokers. Pro-pot activists say that’s just fine. They make the case that marijuana is no different from alcohol and its use should be legalized and regulated by the state. But when its use grows in acceptance, its use clearly grows generally, at least among teens.