It seems as if the governments war on tobacco is paying dividends. After years of raising cigarette taxes, curtailing advertising, taking tobacco out of pro sports and stepped up enforcement on stores selling to minors the number of kids smoking cigarettes is finally dropping. Funny enough they are gravitating to another form of smoke…WEED!
According to thew 37th Monitoring the Future Survey, which asks about 47,000 8th, 10th and 12th graders about usage of drugs and alcohol, weed smoking is at a thirty year high.
Interestingly also is that the survey has found that alcohol use among teenagers is also at 15 year lows.
While some experts beleive3 that the use of the so called legal drugs are down because of increased enforcement, and education. Truth of the matter is it is probably easier for teens to get marijuana than any other drug, legal or not.
Also, with the increased awareness of the drugs attributes and lack of risks being fairly common to find online, teens are most likely deciding that Marijuana is the safest choice of mind altering substances.
For instance, while alcohol and tobacco are responsible for more than 7 million deaths annually worldwide, while there has never been a single recorded death from marijuana use. Also, while both alcohol and tobacco are highly addictive, marijuana is not known to posses any physically addictive properties.
Should Marijuana be legalized and regulated or kept away from as many people as possible?
