Is Marijuana Use Really Rising Among Young People?
The Haymaker is Leafly Senior Editor Bruce Barcott’s opinion column on cannabis politics and culture.
When does good health news magically morph into a worrying trend? When cannabis is involved, of course.
Last week we were treated to a master class in trend creation and data twisting from NIDA director Nora Volkow.
The study data are “very worrying,” says the director of NIDA. No, actually not.
NIDA is the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal agency that has a stranglehold on all cannabis research in the US.
On Aug. 21, Volkow’s agency issued a press release claiming that marijuana and hallucinogen use among young adults had reached an all-time high in the past year.
The following day’s New York Times gave NIDA’s statement a polite gloss. Times health reporter Andrew Jacobs basically rewrote the press release, and the copy desk capped it with this headline: “Marijuana and Psychedelics Use Rising Among Young Adults, Study Finds.”
NIDA director Nora Volkow said Jacobs found the results “very concerning”.
“What they’re telling us is that the problem of substance abuse among young people in this country has gotten worse,” she said, “and that the pandemic, with all its mental stress and turmoil, has probably contributed to the increase.”
The NIDA press release included this alarming image:
The whole thing struck me as odd. Other studies have found a sharp decline in marijuana use among teens in 2020 and 2021 — most likely due to pandemic stay-at-home orders that curtailed opportunities for America’s teens to obtain and use weed. (I’ll leave the hallucinogen data alone for now.)
Intrigued, I delved into the data behind NIDA’s claim. And found – surprise surprise – a huge pile of shit at the bottom of the pond.
Not new, not rising, not buying
The NIDA claim and last week’s Times headline aren’t from a new study, it turns out. They come from the latest Monitoring the Future report, published last December. Monitoring the Future is a national drug use survey conducted annually since 1975 by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. NIDA and its parent company, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are helping fund the study.
Legal adult use has increased with legalization in the states. But teenage usage hasn’t increased.
Eight months ago, when this study was actually new, NIDA issued a press release announcing the results of the survey that in 2021, teenage drug use, including teenage marijuana use, has decreased significantly for a year,” Nora said Volkow back then.
The good news about teenage marijuana use isn’t limited to the pandemic era. In recent years, as legalization has expanded to 19 states, studies have found no associated increase in teenage use. At an anti-drug conference in January, Volkow herself said she was surprised to see years of data showing that “prevalence rates of teenage marijuana use have remained stable despite legalization in many states.”
What has changed between then and now? Nothing – except maybe NIDA’s need to alert the nation about cannabis legalization as election season approaches.
How do you do that when the data undermines your point of view? They rearrange the data.
Here’s how they did it: The data fudge
Note the NIDA definition of “young adults.”
NIDA does not consider a 30-year-old to be an adult. Age: How does it work?
When you see “young adults” in the Times headline, you probably picture people in their late teens, early twenties, right? high school and college years.
Not so.
The “exploding” use of marijuana was pulled from a data set that NIDA extended to include all survey participants aged 19 to 30. That’s a ridiculously wide age range to cross over. At 19 you’re an idiot who empties kegs and dives into Frosh Pond. (If you’re me.) By 30, you’re married, with a job, a mortgage, and a baby on the way. (I again.)
And let’s not neglect the obvious: In legal states, 19- and 20-year-olds can’t legally buy or possess marijuana. Adults aged 21-30 are legal.
What the data actually shows
If you look at Monitoring the Future’s data and separate 18-20 year olds from 21-30 year olds, you’ll find a remarkable story. (I include 18 year olds because the data is there. I don’t know why NIDA chose not to use them.)
Over the past decade, as nearly half of the American population has legalized adult use, researchers at the University of Michigan found that the percentage of 18- to 20-year-olds who have used marijuana at least once in the past year have tried has remained almost the same: 35.4% in 2011 and 35.0% in 2021.
Meanwhile, the percentage of 21- to 30-year-olds (legal age adults) who try marijuana rose from 28% to 43%.
Here’s what it looks like using data from the same Monitoring the Future report:
Marijuana use in the past year: minors vs. legal adults
By lumping the underage cohort with the adult cohort, NIDA pulled the average up and made it appear as if there was an alarming increase in “young adults” using marijuana.
Yes, more legal adults have tried cannabis since it became legal. It’s legal and people are curious. But in fact, the proportion of underage teenagers trying marijuana has remained almost flat over the past decade.
Using keywords to shape the narrative
After NIDA’s data doctors redefined fully grown 30-year-olds as “young adults,” the agency’s director further adjusted the framework. Remember the quote she gave The Times regarding this “new” finding?
What [the data] tell us that the problem of drug abuse among young people in this country has gotten worse.
Notice how the “young adults” in the skewed dataset have now become “young people” in Volkow’s summary.
Also look at the word abuse. She speaks of (mostly) legal adults who have used marijuana at least once in the past year. In the past year. Toking a joint or tasting an infused jelly once or twice a year hardly counts as abuse for most sane adults. I would call it sampling. To attempt. Enjoy. But in the strange island world of NIDA, any use of cannabis is considered abuse.
NY Times: Here, let’s step up the damage
None of this would matter if NIDA didn’t work hand-in-hand with the New York Times. Instead of ignoring NIDA’s press release as a thrown-in piece of chilling madness, the Times’ health department reiterated the agency’s claims as established fact. The editors bit down on NIDA’s hook. Rather than questioning the data, the Times reporter peppered it with supportive quotes and warnings about the various dangers of cannabis use.
What’s the harm, you ask?
It’s already happening. Late last week, the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial that took advantage of NIDA’s erroneous trend to reconsider the state’s decision to legalize cannabis. “There is now strong evidence that demand has indeed increased,” the trib wrote. “Massive.” The paper’s main concerns were “young adults” and cannabis billboards “fully visible to the kids in the back seat.”
In the months and years to come, this New York Times story will be used in editorials, presentation decks, and television commercials by powerful people who want to continue arresting adults for an ounce of weed. The headline is false and is being used to harm hundreds of thousands of Americans suffering unjust and unjustifiable cannabis laws.
Let’s talk credibility
Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this whole dance was the conclusion of Andrew Jacobs’ Times story, in which he gave Nora Volkow space to reflect on the dangers of overzealous messages.
Given the normalization of formerly illegal substances, [Volkow] said public health professionals need to find more nuanced and thoughtful ways to communicate the potential dangers of recreational drugs that also have therapeutic benefits.
“As a society, we tend to be very categorical about these things,” Volkow said. “We say drugs are so bad they fry your brain like an egg, and then we undermine the evidence that they can be harmful depending on the dose and the person taking them. By putting everything in black and white, we lose all credibility.”
Yes. That much is true. If you go black and white, distorting words and dates to play up a nonexistent drug crisis, you lose all credibility.
The Hay Maker: Come out swinging
Bruce Barcott
Leafly senior editor Bruce Barcott oversees news, investigations and feature projects. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America.
Check out Bruce Barcott’s articles
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