Rate of use for youth stays steady, but arrest rates increase

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Students for Sensible Drug Policy gather at the United Nations in New York to protest claims of youth safety as justification for the war on drugs.

The public health implications of marijuana policy reform, especially those in Colorado, have been under scrutiny since legalization of cannabis for adult use in 2013. Opponents of marijuana reform have long argued that regulated, legal access to cannabis would likely increase its use among youth. It turns out, those claims were unfounded.

Last week’s release of the long-awaited 2015 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, issued jointly by the state departments of health, education and human services, surveyed about 17,000 students from state middle and high schools. The data suggests that youth use and access has remained steady since legalization.

The study found that four out of five Colorado high school students have not used marijuana in the past 30 days, a rate that remains unchanged since 2013 and is lower than the national average. In Colorado, less teens use marijuana than alcohol and more teens in Colorado think it is easier or sort of easier to get their hands on alcohol than on marijuana.

From a public health perspective, the data is reassuring, debunking long held myths that legal access to marijuana will have adverse effects on youth. The stigma of marijuana that formed and hardened during the last 70 years of prohibition led to a fear so strong that it influenced policy before it could be asserted factually.

Fear is just that, and it does not necessarily translate into fact just because we hold it. To further bolster the point, coinciding with the flat rate of use for youth, is a drop in the perception of the risk of marijuana by Colorado teens. This suggests that creating a culture of fear to prevent and punish drug use is not only unnecessary, but an ineffective tactic in curbing consumption.

“Elected officials and voters in states that are considering similar proposals should be wary of claims that it will hurt teens,” said Mason Tvert, the Denver-based director of communication for the Marijuana Policy Project, who co-directed the 2012 campaign to regulate marijuana like alcohol, in a press release. “Colorado is proving that you do not need to arrest thousands of responsible adult marijuana consumers in order to prevent consumption by teens … Regulation is working.”

But while many are eager to celebrate the data, a darker truth lurks behind the numbers: Punitive drug policies continue to negatively impact young people in Colorado, especially young people of color.

Despite flat usage rates among teens, juvenile arrests have increased. According to a Colorado Department of Public Safety report, nearly half of all marijuana arrests are juveniles, compared to 25 percent in 2012. In part, this increase can be attributed to less adult arrests as a result of legalization. But, in lieu of public health concerns, there is also more scrutiny being applied to the younger age groups and therefore more punitive action taken.

Most alarming, although unfortunately not all that surprising, is the huge racial disparity within youth arrest rates. The rate for white teens decreased by 8 percent, while the Latino rate increased by 26 percent and the black rate by 58 percent. This is despite similar usage rates across these demographic categories.

Not unlike other exposed racial disparities in policing, this number can be explained away by authorities. If police get more calls to neighborhoods of color, then the disparity is a function a broken system, not an inherent bias in policing or police officers. This is the stance taken by Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson who rejected the idea that police are targeting Latino and black youth in an interview with Colorado Public Radio.

Such repudiation is nothing more than justification for a broken system, one that continues to allow police to use discretion in drug arrests and allows for disparities in arrest rates. Although Colorado authorities are moving away from zero-tolerance policies, these arrests still come with severe penalties for offenders that negatively disrupt their support systems, access to education and stability during an impressionable stage of their lives.

We all have prejudice but when one person’s bias can have a monumental effect on another person’s life, and when the combined bias of a state full of police adds up to a 58 point discrepancy in arrests between races, it is no longer enough for the system to explain why it is the way it is. It must change to protect us from ourselves. 

The war on drugs is nothing more than the cumulative effect of punitive drug policies. And as long as they exist, communities of color will continue to suffer and be oppressed. As the state moves away from a punitive culture and toward one of instituting evidence-based policies aimed at harm reduction and the protection of human rights, youth must be included in that effort.

Colorado is informing national and international marijuana reform efforts. The data from the Healthy Kids Colorado Schools Survey will serve as a way for others following our lead to resist giving into the stigmas of marijuana and empower them to move beyond fear-based policy.

This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.