[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Frequitude

Which academic studies show that legalization/decriminalization leads to lower use among the general population, lower use among youths, and lower instances of marijuana related DUIs?

The marijuana findings are particularly noteworthy given that Colorado and Washington state implemented full-scale retail marijuana markets this year, and Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voters opted to do the same. A central tenet of legalization opponents, from present-day prohibitionists like Andy Harris all the way back to Richard Nixon, has been that loosening restrictions on marijuana will "send the wrong" message to youngsters and lead to an explosion in teen use.

Harris sums up the mindset best in a recent appearance at the Heritage Foundation: "Relaxing [marijuana] laws clearly leads to more teenage drug use. It should be intuitively obvious to everyone that if you legalize marijuana for adults, more children will use marijuana because the message that it's dangerous will be blunted."

While it's a politically potent message -- nobody wants to see more kids doing drugs -- there's a substantial body of research showing that teen pot use hasn't risen in the states that have legalized medical marijuana. In 2014, a year when marijuana was all over the news and national attitudes toward the drug are relaxing, teen use actually trended downward.

Or, look at it from the other side: In the early 1990s the federal drug war was in full swing. But teen marijuana use spiked sharply during that period. It didn't start falling until the late '90s, when the first states began implementing medical marijuana laws.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w...ates-legalize/

Will pot use increase? There’s little evidence internationally to suggest a surge in use, at least any more than it has as an easily obtainable illegal substance. The 2002 Senate report concluded: “We have not legalized cannabis and we have one of the highest rates [of use] in the world. Countries adopting a more liberal policy have, for the most part, rates of usage lower than ours, which stabilized after a short period of growth.”

The Netherlands, where marijuana is available in hundreds of adult-only coffee shops, is a case in point. The 2012 United Nations World Drug Report, using its own sources, pegs the level of use there at just 7.7 per cent of those aged 15 to 64. The U.S. has the seventh-highest rate of pot smokers, 14.1 per cent, while Canada ranks eighth at 12.7 per cent. Spain and Italy, which have decriminalized possession for all psychoactive drugs, are interesting contrasts. Cannabis use in Italy is 14.6 per cent, while Spain, at 10.6 per cent, is lower than the U.S. or Canada.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/w...ize-marijuana/

The statistics appear to be that consumption of prohibited products goes down once they are legitimized.