A federal health agency on Monday hosted a leading marijuana prohibitionist group for an event focused on cannabis use trends and youth prevention, giving the organization a prominent platform for a discussion that largely promoted an anti-reform agenda.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA) invited Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), to speak at a webinar on cannabis-related emergency incidents, the “potential negative impacts of state legalization” and methods of deterring youth usage.
The conversation skewed heavily toward the prohibition side of the cannabis reform debate, with Rear Admiral Christopher Jones, the director of SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, opening by overviewing data on “an upward trajectory of marijuana use” and its potential harms.
“What we hope to do today is sort of unpack some of the data that are underneath these trends,” he said. “But certainly the recent uptick is concerning as we look at past-month marijuana use.”
While Jones acknowledged that youth cannabis usage in recent years as more states have legalized cannabis have been “a little bit flatter” compared to rising use rates for adults, there was no discussion about how that might be related to the enactment of regulated markets for adults, which require IDs to ensure that underage people are not accessing the products. A question about the issue submitted by Marijuana Moment during the event was not addressed.
Sabet, for his part, accused pro-legalization advocates and industry stakeholders of selectively promoting data around youth consumption trends to demonstrate that legalization is not associated with an increase among that cohort.
“What you will find the industry often do is cherry pick some of those studies and find one or two states in the timeframe that suits them to show that there was a decrease—you know, remarkably worse there—or there was no increase, they often say, because it’s even hard for them to say there’s a decrease,” Sabet said. “That’s almost impossible. But they can finagle the numbers to say that there was no increase.”
SAMHSA’s just this summer put out data showing that youth cannabis consumption has remained stable amid the state legalization movement.
Hellbound and Down 