(Roughly) Daily

Kids these days, not so much. Bruce Gil reports…

Marijuana consumption among teens has seen a significant drop over the past decade, according to a new study published this month in the scientific journal Pediatric Reports. The news comes after teen vaping hit a 10-year low this year.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine also found that teen girls now surpass boys in reporting marijuana use. In 2021, girls reported a higher rate of current marijuana consumption (17.8%) than boys (13.6%), according to data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. This is a big shift from 2011 when boys were more likely to use marijuana (25.9%) compared to girls (20.1%)…

…The study also showed that the percentage of teens that reported trying cannabis for the first time before age 13 dropped to 4.9% in 2021, compared with 8% in 2021…

Earlier this year, results from the National Youth Tobacco Survey found that teen tobacco use is also on the decline with teen vaping hitting a 10-year low.

About 1.63 million or 6% percent of middle and high school students said they are currently using e-cigarettes, down nearly 2% from 2.13 million last year.

This is the lowest level in a decade, and far below a peak of 20% in 2019…

Via the ever-enlightening Walter Hickey, who observes…

There are all sorts of possible theories behind this — pandemic-era cannabis supply chain problems reverberating across a generation of teens, a shift in the cyclical straightedge-rebel trend cycle, the fact that pot is now annoyingly strong which means there’s no solid entry point for new smokers — but at the end of the day, the reality is that anything that’s legal and popular among adults is inherently uncool for teenagers, so this was all just a matter of time…

“More teen girls smoke marijuana than boys now, study says,” from @brucgl in @qz.

For some (broad) historical context: “Drugs and Trade,” an excerpt from The World That Trade Created by Kenneth Pomeranz (via the always-illuminating DelanceyPlace)

* Barack Obama

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As we wonder about weed, we might recall that it was on this date in 1951 that President Harry S. Truman signed the Boggs Act into law. An amendment to the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, it established mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes for the first time in the United States.

Named after Democratic congressman (and future House Majority Leader) Thomas Hale Boggs Sr. of Louisiana who sponsored it, the law was originally intended to apply only to narcotics. But thanks to the testimony of Federal Narcotics Bureau Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger, marijuana was added to the list of harder drugs included in the bill—arguing that though marijuana itself wasn’t deadly, it was a “stepping stone” to the other harder drugs in the bill. Sound familiar? That’s because Anslinger’s argument would later come to be known as the “gateway drug” theory pushed by Drug War proponents during the 1970s and ’80s.

The Boggs Act imposed harsh new penalties for both possession and trafficking: under this law, a first offense for marijuana possession carried a sentence of 2-5 years in prison and a $2,000 fine (the equivalent of $20,000 today); a second offense would get you 5-10 years, and for a third offense you were looking at 10-20 years behind bars. One representative from New York reportedly even proposed a 100-year sentence for dealers, but fortunately, that provision was not adopted. Sadly though, mandatory minimums would be reinstituted and expanded in later years: in the Narcotic Control Act of 1956, and again with The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.

– source