Has cannabis use among youth increased after changes in its legal status? A commentary on use of Monitoring the Future for analyses of changes in state cannabis laws (2020)

As US states move toward various forms of adult access to cannabis, there has been a great interest in measuring the impact of such changes on adolescent cannabis use. Two recent prominent analyses have used Monitoring the Future (MTF), a nationally representative survey of students, to examine the effects. We compared MTF data for California and for Washington State with other survey data on use by adolescents in those states. In both studies, findings based on MTF were different from those using other larger, state-representative surveys. The discrepancy reflects the high within-state variation in prevalence rates and the small number of schools in MTF state samples. Using the Washington Health Youth Survey, we estimate that after recreational cannabis legalization past 30-day cannabis use prevalence in grade 8 decreased by 22.0%, in grade 10 prevalence decreased by 12.7%, and no effect in grade 12. These trends are consistent with those in states without recreational cannabis laws, suggesting that legalization did not impact adolescent use prevalence. Long-term trends in MTF are consistent with other data, but year-to-year volatility in state-level series undermines the survey's suitability for evaluation of state cannabis policy changes. Survey-based analyses at the state level need to be cross-validated with findings from other data sources. When findings are disparate and methodological rigor is equivalent, analyses of data sources specifically designed to describe state-level phenomena are more credible.