It’s not clear why, but youths in U.S. states where medical marijuana is legal report more vaping of cannabis than their peers in states where weed is legal for all adults or it is completely illegal.
New research found that about 27% of 12th graders in medical marijuana states reported vaping cannabis compared to 19% in states that bar the drug or allow it for adult use.
“More than a quarter of our youth in medical states were vaping cannabis. That’s a lot,” said first author Christian Maynard, a doctoral student in sociology at Washington State University.
“We were expecting medical and adult use states would be more similar. Instead, we didn’t find any statistical difference between prohibited and adult use states,” he said in a university news release.
For the study, Maynard and his university adviser, sociologist Jennifer Schwartz, analyzed responses from 3,770 high school seniors in the 2020 Monitoring the Future survey. It has surveyed U.S. youth since 1975.