Most Americans now live in a jurisdiction where cannabis is legal — and use by teens has never been lower.
Yes, you read that right.
According to the latest findings from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer young people nationwide are using marijuana today than at any time in the last 30 years.
In the 24 states where adult-use cannabis markets are legally regulated, teen use has plummeted. For example, cannabis use by high schoolers fell over 60 percent in Colorado following legalization. In Washington, use by 12th graders has declined over 65 percent. (Colorado and Washington were the first two states in the nation to enact adult-use legalization laws.)
In Ohio, the most recent state to enact legalization, teen use has fallen 33 percent in just two years.
In short, legalization has accomplished something that prohibition never could. It took marijuana products off the street corner and placed them behind the counter — largely out of the reach of young people.
This outcome shouldn’t come as a surprise. Licensed retailers check IDs and deny service to underage patrons. Criminal entrepreneurs do not.
In fact, compliance check data from legal cannabis states finds that licensed marijuana retailers do a better job barring minors from their premises than liquor stores do. For example, year-to-date data from Oregon reports that underage patrons posing as adults are denied access at marijuana dispensaries nearly 100 percent of the time. Among alcohol retailers, compliance is only 80 percent.
In Illinois, police in 2025 attempted underage purchases at more than 1,400 licensed dispensaries. Their efforts were rejected over 99.5 percent of the time.
Data from California, Colorado, Washington, and other legalization states tell a similar story.
That’s why scientists writing in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) Pediatrics concluded: “Marijuana use among youth may actually decline after legalization for recreational purposes. This latter result is consistent with … the argument that it is more difficult for teenagers to obtain marijuana as drug dealers are replaced by licensed dispensaries that require proof of age.”
Of course, legalization has resulted in other positive outcomes as well. State-legal marijuana markets have created over 400,000 jobs and raised more than $28 billion in new tax revenue. In addition, hundreds of thousands of Americans are no longer having their lives disrupted by low-level cannabis arrests. (A case in point: In New Jersey, low-level marijuana possession arrests fell from over 30,000 annually to less than 300 post-legalization. In Maryland, arrests declined from over 16,000 per year to less than 500.)
In legal jurisdictions, regulated markets are displacing the unregulated ones — with most cannabis consumers now saying they get their products from licensed brick-and-mortar retailers. Unregulated markets will be further displaced as legal markets evolve and excise taxes on legal marijuana products decrease over time.
These successes are why some two-thirds of Americans support legalization and why no state has ever repealed its marijuana legalization laws. Voters understand that legalization provides necessary controls to the cannabis market, while criminal prohibition provides no such safeguards.
