Rates of marijuana use among Colorado teens continued to decline in 2025—and youth are also reporting significantly lower levels of access to cannabis—according to a biennial survey from state health officials.
The findings from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS) seem to support a longstanding argument from reform advocates who’ve maintained that regulating marijuana sales and imposing age-related restrictions is a more effective strategy to prevent youth use compared to imposing criminal prohibition on adults.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE), which oversees the survey, found that 9.7 percent of high school students in the state reported past-30 day marijuana use—a meaningful reduction compared to the 12.8 percent usage rate youth reported in 2023.
Notably, current teen marijuana use rates have declined 56 percent decrease since 2011, which was the year before Colorado voters approved recreational legalization.
“Trend analysis shows significant decreases in marijuana use over the past 10 years,” CDPHE said.
Also, Colorado high school students are notably less likely to have used cannabis in the past 30 days than the national average of 17 percent, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
The Colorado survey also asked middle school students about cannabis use, and a similar trend was observed last year, with just 1.5 percent of those in grades 6-8 reporting past-30 day marijuana consumption. That’s down from 3 percent in 2023 and 5.1 percent in 2013.
Lifetime cannabis usage has also continued to fall among Colorado youth in grades 6-12, the HKCS found.
“We are extremely pleased to see the rate of cannabis use among teens in Colorado continues to decline and remains lower than the national average,” Chuck Smith, CEO of Colorado Leads, an alliance of cannabis business leaders, said in a press release. “More than a decade after legalization, Colorado continues to demonstrate that a well-regulated cannabis market can successfully reduce underage access and protect public health.”
According to the Colorado survey, 33.5 percent of youth respondents said they felt it would be “sort of easy or very easy to get marijuana if they wanted,” which marks a 39 percent decrease from 2013.
“While these long-term trends are promising, we recognize the importance of remaining vigilant and continuing to work alongside other stakeholders to sustain this progress,” Smith said. “Colorado’s legal cannabis industry remains firmly committed to preventing youth access, as evidenced by consistently high compliance rates for age verification and refusing sales to minors. Together, we will continue building on the success of a regulatory framework that is delivering the outcomes it was designed to achieve.”
The Colorado data adds to a growing body of research demonstrating that, contrary to talking points from prohibitionists, legalizing and regulating cannabis doesn’t lead to increased underage use or access. Rather, it consistently seems to have the opposite effect, as evidenced by the Colorado experience.
Creating a regulatory framework for cannabis where licensed retailers must check IDs and implement other security mechanisms to prevent unlawful diversions seems to have to be a more effective policy than prohibition, under which illicit suppliers’ products are untested and where age-gating isn’t a strictly enforced regulation.
“These findings are consistent with those from other adult-use legal states, which show steep declines in marijuana use by young people following the adoption of regulated, age-restricted markets,” NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said of the Colorado survey. “These results bought to reassure lawmakers that cannabis access can be legally regulated in a manner that is safe, effective, and that does not inadvertently impact young people’s habits.”
Outside of Colorado, cannabis consumption by middle and high school students in Minnesota post-legalization is also lower now than it has ever been over the past decade, according to recently published state data.
A federally funded study out of Canada that was released earlier this year also found that that youth marijuana use rates declined after the country legalized cannabis.
German officials similarly released a separate report on their country’s experience with legalizing marijuana nationwide that showed that fears from opponents about youth use, traffic safety and more have so far proved largely unfounded.
Last year, U.S. federal health data also indicated that while past-year marijuana use overall has climbed in recent years, the rise has been “driven by increases…among adults 26 years or older.” As for younger Americans, rates of both past-year use and cannabis use disorder, by contrast, “remained stable among adolescents and young adults between 2021 and 2024.”
Across the U.S., research suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize the drug for adults.
A report from the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), for example, found that youth marijuana use declined in 19 out of 21 states that legalized adult-use marijuana—with teen cannabis consumption down an average of 35 percent in the earliest states to legalize.
Another U.S. study reported a “significant decrease” in youth marijuana use from 2011 to 2021—a period in which more than a dozen states legalized marijuana for adults—detailing lower rates of both lifetime and past-month use by high-school students nationwide.
A separate federal report concluded that cannabis consumption among minors—defined as people 12 to 20 years of age—fell slightly between 2022 and 2023.
Separately, a research letter published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2024 said there’s no evidence that states’ adoption of laws to legalize and regulate marijuana for adults have led to an increase in youth use of cannabis.
Another JAMA-published study similarly found that neither legalization nor the opening of retail stores led to increases in youth cannabis use.
In 2023, meanwhile, a U.S. health official said that teen marijuana use has not increased “even as state legalization has proliferated across the country.”
Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.
The post Fewer Colorado Teens Are Using Marijuana Now Than Before Legalization, State Study Shows, Refuting Opponents’ Core Argument appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
