Medical Marijuana Laws and Adolescent Marijuana Use

deborah_hasin_phd_professor_of_clinical_epidemiology_columbia_university_medical_center

New York, NY (June 15, 2015) – Marijuana use in teenagers does not increase after a state legalizes medical marijuana, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry The research, by Deborah Hasin, PhD, and colleagues, is based on data from more than one million teenagers in 21 states where medical marijuana was legalized.

Dr. Hasin is a professor of epidemiology at the Department of Psychiatry and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University Medical Center.  Read more about the findings, and their implications here.

To speak further with the authors on the findings, please contact Rachel Yarmolinsky, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, 646-774-5353 or ry2134@cumc.columbia.edu; or Stephanie Berger, Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, 212-305-4372 or sb2247@cumc.columbia.edu.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/

Columbia epidemiologist Deborah Hasin discusses US medical marijuana laws and adolescent marijuana use with Niall Boyce. Audio courtesy of the Lancet: www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/…00217-5/abstract

Tags

marijuana, public health

References

About:

The paper is entitled “Medical Marijuana Laws and Adolescent Marijuana Use in the USA: 1991 – 2014”. The authors are Deborah S. Hasin, PhD;  Melanie Wall, PhD; Katherine M. Keyes, PhD; Magdalena Cerdá, DrPH;  John Schulenberg, PhD; Patrick M. O’Malley, PhD;  Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH; Rosalie L. Pacula, PhD; Tianshu Feng, MS.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The study was sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), U.S. National Institutes of Health with funding from NIDA grants R01DA001411 and R01DA034244. Additional support is acknowledged from K05AA014223 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA); K01AA021511 from NIAAA; K01DA030449 from NIDA (MC), the Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.