Teen Marijuana Use Is Lower Now Than Before Legalization, Government Study From Minnesota Officials Shows

Despite concerns from marijuana legalization opponents who claimed the policy would lead to skyrocketing use by teens, cannabis consumption by middle and high school students in Minnesota is lower now than it has ever been over the past decade, according to newly published state data.

“There continues to be a steady decline in youth cannabis use since 2013, with 96% of students reporting not having used cannabis in the last month,” the state Department of Health said in a press release on Monday about the latest results of the Minnesota Student Survey, which is conducted every three years among students in grades 5, 8, 9 and 11.

Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed a bill to legalize marijuana in Minnesota in 2023, making the latest iteration of the survey the first to come since the prohibition of cannabis for adults over the age of 21 was ended.

State officials said the new data “showed healthier trends related to student use and perceptions of harms” about cannabis in recent years.

There has been a 57.7 percent statewide drop in self-reported past-year cannabis use from 2013 to 2025 among 8th, 9th and 11th graders combined. There has also been a decline over time in past-month use.

“Overall, self-reported cannabis use by students in Minnesota has continued to decrease each year since 2013,” a fact sheet on the results says.

More students also now view using marijuana once or twice a week as moderately to greatly harmful, “reversing the trend seen from 2013 to 2022,” the Department of Health said.

Interestingly, respondents in the survey greatly overestimated how many of their fellow students use marijuana.

“In 2025, 8th, 9th, and 11th grade students reported thinking that over half of their peers (54%) use cannabis, but 92% of students reported never using cannabis,” the fact sheet says.

Even though the survey shows overall that underage use of marijuana is declining in the legalization era, there was one concerning result that stood out in the data, state officials said.

“Despite positive trends, the student survey—indicates that some of our children are encountering cannabis at young ages,” Brooke Cunningham, Minnesota’s commissioner of health, said. “We need talk to our children about cannabis before they encounter it because we know the potential harms that early use can bring to their developing brains, mental health and futures.”

The Minnesota survey showing that legalization hasn’t led to a spike in teen marijuana use is largely consistent with the results of prior studies in other states and at the national level.

It also reinforces reform advocates’ position that creating a regulatory framework for cannabis where licensed retailers must check IDs and implement other security mechanisms to prevent unlawful diversion is a far more effective policy than prohibition, with illicit suppliers whose products may be untested and where age-gating isn’t a strictly enforced regulation.

To that point, a recent federally funded study out of Canada found that that youth marijuana use rates declined after the country legalized cannabis.

German officials similarly released a separate report on their country’s experience with legalizing marijuana nationwide that showed that fears from opponents about youth use, traffic safety and more have so far proved largely unfounded.

Last year, U.S. federal health data also indicated that while past-year marijuana use overall has climbed in recent years, the rise has been “driven by increases…among adults 26 years or older.” As for younger Americans, rates of both past-year use and cannabis use disorder, by contrast, “remained stable among adolescents and young adults between 2021 and 2024.”

Across the U.S., research suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize the drug for adults.

A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), for example, found that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen cannabis consumption down an average of 35 percent in the earliest states to legalize.

Another survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also showed a decline in the proportion of high-school students reporting past-month marijuana use over the past decade, as dozens of states moved to legalize cannabis.

Another U.S. study reported a “significant decrease” in youth marijuana use from 2011 to 2021—a period in which more than a dozen states legalized marijuana for adults—detailing lower rates of both lifetime and past-month use by high-school students nationwide.

Another federal report concluded that cannabis consumption among minors—defined as people 12 to 20 years of age—fell slightly between 2022 and 2023.

Separately, a research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2024 said there’s no evidence that states’ adoption of laws to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to an increase in youth use of cannabis.

Another JAMA-published study similarly found that neither legalization nor the opening of retail stores led to increases in youth cannabis use.

In 2023, meanwhile, a U.S. health official said that teen marijuana use has not increased “even as state legalization has proliferated across the country.”

Medical Marijuana Helps People Stop Using Opioids, Sleeping Aids And Other Prescription Drugs, Study Shows

Using medical marijuana appears to help people reduce the use of other medications, including opioids, sleeping aids and antidepressants, according to a new study involving more than 3,500 patients. They also experience far fewer negative side effects after switching to cannabis from prescription drugs.

The results of the survey show that across all medication categories, patients were able to reduce use of other prescription drugs by an average of 84.5 percent after beginning medical cannabis consumption.

More than half the patients (58.9 percent) stopped use of other prescription medications completely.

The study, conducted and published by the medical cannabis and telehealth company Bloomwell, involved an online survey of 3,528 patients in Germany last month.

“Through the use of medical cannabis, patients were able to reduce the use of other prescription medications by an average of 84.5% across all categories.”

It found that 93.4 percent of patients taking prescription sleeping pills were able to reduce their use by at least half after starting medical marijuana, and 75.5 percent were able to quit taking the meds completely.

For methylphenidate, an ADHD medication sold under the name Ritalin, 77.3 percent of medical marijuana patients were able to stop completely.

Sixty-one percent of patients who previously relied on opioids were able to completely discontinue their use with the help of medical marijuana.

Ceasing to use the prescription drugs also led to a large reduction in medication-associated side effects, with 60.7 percent reporting they were no longer experiencing any.

“These patient reports prove that in many cases, besides the actual symptom treatment, one of the essential reasons for an individual therapeutic trial with medical cannabis is the absence or reduction of medication-associated side effects,” the study concluded.

“60.7% of patients report no longer experiencing medication-associated side effects due to the use of medical cannabis.”

There were positive side effects reported, however, with 67.8 percent saying medical cannabis helped them concentrate better, 61.9 percent saying it helped them foster more social contacts and 53.9 percent experiencing fewer sick days off from work.

“The main reason for prescribing medical cannabis, besides symptom treatment, is the reduction or avoidance of side effects from other medications,” Julian Wichmann, co-Founder and CEO of Bloomwell, said in a press release. “For example, anyone who can completely discontinue opioids by using medical cannabis has a good chance of managing their daily life and work free of side effects.”

“We should therefore not demand restrictions on access to medical cannabis, but rather ensure that doctors are more willing to attempt an individual therapeutic trial with medical cannabis, or at least recommend it and refer patients to colleagues,” he said. “At the same time, our survey shows that we should finally discuss the great benefits of medical cannabis more openly, instead of exclusively warning about empirically unproven risks and discrediting flowers.”

This is not the first study to position medical cannabis as a safer alternative to opioids and other prescription drugs.

About one in three Americans who use CBD say they take it as an alternative or supplement to at least one medication—particularly painkillers—according to a federally funded study published in February.

Similarly, another recent federally funded study, published by the American Medical Association (AMA), added more evidence that marijuana can serve as an effective substitute for opioids in chronic pain treatment.

Other AMA-published research has found that legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational purposes is “significantly associated with reduced opioid use among patients diagnosed with cancer.”

A separate paper published in October similarly found that medical marijuana legalization is “associated with significant reductions in opioid prescribing.”

In August, meanwhile, Australian researchers published a study showing that marijuana can serve as an effective substitute for opioids in pain management treatment.

Another study published last year in the journal Drug and Alcohol Review found that, among drug users who experience chronic pain, daily cannabis use was linked to a higher likelihood of quitting the use of opioids—especially among men.

Other research also found that legalizing medical cannabis appeared to significantly reduce monetary payments from opioid manufacturers to doctors who specialize in pain, with authors finding “evidence that this decrease is due to medical marijuana becoming available as a substitute” for prescription painkillers.

Other recent research also showed a decline in fatal opioid overdoses in jurisdictions where marijuana was legalized for adults. That study found a “consistent negative relationship” between legalization and fatal overdoses, with more significant effects in states that legalized cannabis earlier in the opioid crisis. Authors estimated that recreational marijuana legalization “is associated with a decrease of approximately 3.5 deaths per 100,000 individuals.”

“Our findings suggest that broadening recreational marijuana access could help address the opioid epidemic,” that report said. “Previous research largely indicates that marijuana (primarily for medical use) can reduce opioid prescriptions, and we find it may also successfully reduce overdose deaths.”

Another recently published report into prescription opioid use in Utah following the state’s legalization of medical marijuana found that the availability of legal cannabis both reduced opioid use by patients with chronic pain and helped drive down prescription overdose deaths statewide. Overall, results of the study indicated that “cannabis has a substantial role to play in pain management and the reduction of opioid use,” it said.

President Donald Trump said in December that marijuana can “make people feel much better” and serve as a “substitute for addictive and potentially lethal opioid painkillers” as he issued an executive order to federally reschedule cannabis and promote access to CBD for therapeutic purposes. He clarified, however, that he personally has no interest in using marijuana himself.

Vaporizing Marijuana Reduces Harmful Inhaled Byproducts By 99% Compared To Joint Smoking, New Study Shows

Vaporizing marijuana releases far fewer harmful chemicals than smoking joints does, according to a new study.

“These results demonstrate that combustion—not cannabis itself—is the primary driver of harmful inhalation byproducts, and that controlled vaporization can significantly reduce exposure to these compounds,” the study conducted and self-published by the vape device company PAX found.

Lighting marijuana on fire through smoking releases a number of harmful or potentially harmful compounds (HPHCs)—including benzene, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. Vaporization, in contrast, heats cannabis to below the point of combustion while still releasing cannabinoids and terpenes.

The research—conducted by Richard Rucker, who serves as PAX’s director of product integrity, and Derek Shiokari, a senior chemist and data scientist at the company—compared aerosol generated by PAX’s dry herb vaporization device (FLOW) and its oil vaporization device (TRIP) with smoke from combusted marijuana joints.

The team compared levels of 16 HPHCs between the methods of consumption, all using the same batch of ground Lemon Cake Batter cannabis from Humboldt Farms.

“Across all measured analytes, vaporization reduced harmful byproducts by up to 99% compared to joint smoke,” they concluded.

Via PAX.

“Combustion produces harmful byproducts—whether it’s tobacco, wood or cannabis,” Rucker said in a press release. “By heating cannabis without burning it, vaporization significantly reduces the formation of these toxic compounds. It’s the same plant, but completely different exposure. This research helps quantify the difference, giving consumers clearer information about how their choices impact exposure.”

When cannabis is lit on fire via smoking, its components like cannabinoids, terpenes, lipids, proteins and carbohydrates experience thermal degradation and oxidation. That leads to the formation of particulate matter and generates additional compounds such as volatile organic compounds, aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrogen-containing compounds, among others, the study said.

“Combustion of cannabis plant material produces a complex aerosol containing numerous harmful byproducts generated through pyrolysis and oxidation. Under matched puffing conditions, vaporization of cannabis flower reduced exposure to these harmful compounds by up to 99% compared with joint smoke. These findings demonstrate that combustion is the primary source of toxic chemical exposure during cannabis smoking, and that vaporization technologies can substantially reduce formation of these byproducts.”

“Across the sixteen quantified HPHCs, vapor aerosol contained up to 99% lower concentrations compared with joint smoke,” the paper concluded. “These results demonstrate dramatic reductions in key combustion markers including aromatic hydrocarbons and aldehydes.”

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.