Age restrictions in legal marijuana states are effectively keeping cannabis out of the hands of minors, according to newly published data in the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs.
A team of investigators from California, Colorado, and New Mexico assessed whether licensed retail cannabis facilities would sell to pseudo-underage buyers who failed to show proof of age.
Authors reported, “Compliance with laws restricting marijuana sales to individuals age 21 years or older with a valid ID was extremely high and possibly higher than compliance with restrictions on alcohol sales.”
They concluded, “The retail market at present may not be a direct source of marijuana for underage individuals.”
Similar assessments of facilities in other jurisdictions have also shown that the overwhelming majority of marijuana retailers refuse sales to apparent minors.
A pair of studies published earlier this week from Columbia University researchers reported that changes in marijuana’s legal status are “not associated with higher prevalence rates of marijuana use among adolescents.”
An abstract of the study, “Pseudo-Underage Assessment of Compliance With Identification Regulations at Retail Marijuana Outlets in Colorado,” appears here.
I think you’ll find in general, Colorado dispensaries card everybody. I’m 56, so nobody is going to mistake me for a teenager! But when I forget my ID’s, I have to go back home for them. If you don’t have proper ID, you don’t get in — period. It doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you look your age, or even whether they know you.
I call my ID’s my “freedom papers.”
Love it or hate it, regulation is working as intended.
I am so glad to hear this! I knew it anyway because they card you twice no matter what your age is. Way to go retailers!!!!
There goes math and facts again, rising up like smoke and fu€king up another money laundering prohibitionist’s life… and a few old fu€ks who still think marijuana killed their kid, not the high-strung world of addiction they exposed them to. What a wonderful dilemma of truth we have discovered.
Curious teenagers experimenting with altered states have a safer product in cannabis compared to the current alcohol and cigarettes.
Damn good point. Marijuana doesn’t suddenly become “bad for you” when it finds itself in the hands of a teenager. Alcohol and tobacco, on the other hand, always pose real dangers.
Quite simply put, legalizing works.
Sorry to be so short in this comment.