{"id":1903,"date":"2018-11-21T11:27:58","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T00:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/teens-are-trying-marijuana-before-alcohol-and-tobacco-2\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T21:02:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:02:17","slug":"teens-are-trying-marijuana-before-alcohol-and-tobacco-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/teens-are-trying-marijuana-before-alcohol-and-tobacco-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Teens are trying marijuana before alcohol and tobacco"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not because teens are consuming weed more, it\u2019s because they\u2019re using tobacco and alcohol less<\/p>\n<p>Teens used to try alcohol first, then tobacco, and then marijuana. Now, marijuana is increasingly the first \u201cgateway\u201d substance for adolescents, according to new research.<\/p>\n<p>This trend is not because teens are smoking cannabis more than ever. Rather, the change is because teens are smoking cigarettes and drinking&nbsp;less&nbsp;while the numbers for marijuana have held steady, according to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mailman.columbia.edu\/people\/our-faculty\/kmk2104\">Katherine M. Keyes<\/a>, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University and co-author of the new study, published this week in the journal&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0376871618307555?via=ihub\">Drug and Alcohol Dependence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs we\u2019ve seen the dramatic declines in alcohol and tobacco, we haven\u2019t seen dramatic declines in marijuana, so now every year it\u2019s more and more likely that kids are starting their drug-use careers with marijuana,\u201d says Keyes. She adds that rates of teen drinking and smoking started to fall \u2014 thanks largely to widespread public health campaigns \u2014 long before the recent wave of pro-marijuana lobbying.<\/p>\n<p>Most likely, this trend will continue as marijuana becomes less stigmatized and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/11\/7\/18071680\/marijuana-legalization-michigan-missouri-utah-north-dakota-midterms-politics-policy\">more and more states vote to legalize the drug<\/a>. Though teens aren\u2019t supposed to smoke marijuana even in the states that have fully legalized it, \u201cit\u2019s not going out on a huge limb to suggest that marijuana is going to be more available at a lower cost to adolescents,\u201d says Keyes. \u201cIf you make a substance more available at a lower cost and easier to access, you\u2019re gonna see increases.\u201d After all, it\u2019s also illegal for kids to drink or smoke, but many easily find both alcohol and cigarettes in their own homes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Comment<\/strong>:&nbsp;Education and Legislation work to shift culture better than \u2018education\u2019 alone. Our emerging generation are the first in 120 years to grow up with the strong and uncompromising message that \u2018tobacco is bad, but marijuana is medicine!\u2019\u2026 No surprise as to how that \u2018education\u2019 is leading the generation, as this research further validates!&nbsp;Dalgarno Institute<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/11\/20\/18104967\/weed-drugs-public-health-teens-science-alcohol-tobacco\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2018\/11\/20\/18104967\/weed-drugs-public-health-teens-science-alcohol-tobacco<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not because teens are consuming weed more, it\u2019s because they\u2019re using tobacco and alcohol less Teens used to try alcohol first, then tobacco, and then marijuana. Now, marijuana is increasingly the first \u201cgateway\u201d substance for adolescents, according to new research. This trend is not because teens are smoking cannabis more than ever. Rather, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-1903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-conundrum","tag-cannabis-conundrum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dalgarnoinstitute.org.au\/wp_site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}