Speaking to a group of lawmakers this week, an official from the White House’s anti-drug office acknowledged that in Colorado and other states that have legalized marijuana for adults, consumption of cannabis by teens has fallen—contrary to fears often expressed by prohibitionists.
“For some reason, the use rate among this age bracket is going down,” said Dale Quigley, deputy coordinator for the National Marijuana Initiative, a project of the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program. “We’re not 100 percent sure why it’s going down. It’s a good thing that it’s going down, but we don’t understand why.”