Do Medical Marijuana Laws Normalize Marijuana Use? Teen and Young Adult Perceptions of Marijuana in States with Medical Marijuana Legislation

Almost half of U.S. states have passed medical marijuana legislation, and it seems likely that the availability of medical marijuana will continue to expand over time.  Teens and young adults, who are in a crucial developmental window both for forming their perceptions of and attitudes toward marijuana and for the onset of drug use, might be influenced by the medical marijuana policy of their environment.  Our analysis of individual-level data from the NSDUH supports this proposition, suggesting that the attitudes of teens and young adults who live in states where medical marijuana is legal differ in several ways from those of their peers who live in states where it is not legal, even after controlling for appropriate individual- and state-level variables.  Teens and young adults living in medical marijuana states are consistently more permissive in their beliefs about marijuana than their peers in non-medical marijuana states.  Specifically, they are significantly more likely to report that marijuana is easy to get (71% vs. 65% for 15-17 year olds), that they believe that monthly marijuana use is not a great risk, and that they believe that weekly marijuana use is not a great risk (70% vs. 62% for 15-17 year olds).  Teens in medical marijuana states are also less likely to report that they think their parents disapprove of trying marijuana.  Even in regression models that control for individual-level variables that might also predict these beliefs, such as religiosity, sex, and level of monitoring by parents, and state-level variables that might be predictive such as conservative political affiliation, in most analyses the state’s medical marijuana policy remained an important predictor.  For example, in models predicting 12-14 year olds’ perception that their parents disapprove of trying marijuana, the odds ratio associated with living in a medical marijuana state was 0.72, indicating that living in a medical marijuana state was associated with a reduced likelihood of youth reporting that their parents disapprove of trying marijuana.  Although the causal relationships are unclear at this time, our analyses demonstrate that teens and young adults living in states with legal medical marijuana may, in general, view marijuana less negatively than those who live in non-medical marijuana states.