The authors raise an important point about the unclear mechanisms by which medical marijuana policies could be contributing to more permissive views among American youths. Our study found that the implementation of state medical marijuana laws does not directly impact the views of young people in those states. However, independent of this, the United States is witnessing a national trend toward young people adopting more permissive views on marijuana. We stopped short of interpreting these findings to mean that state laws do not matter. Since young people access information through digital and social media, symbolic influences of the medical marijuana debate are unlikely to stay confined within state borders. Now, with more than half of US states having passed medical marijuana laws, the cumulative effects on society may be significant.
Although it was beyond the scope of our study to test the mechanisms of shifting norms, future studies should consider how information about marijuana policy diffuses through the social networks of young people. The authors suggest a particular statistical strategy for doing so. However, we would urge hypothesis-driven research that tests multiple mechanisms. Symbolically powerful political events at the national level should be explored, such as President Obama’s 2006 public admission to marijuana use and the national debate over the constitutionality of marijuana legalization. Researchers should consider how marketing of new marijuana products (e.g., “dabs”) popularized by music celebrities impacts young peoples’ views. More generally, they should study the impacts of commercialization of marijuana by producers and distributors.1,2 Finally, age-period-cohort studies should consider how cohorts of parents who experimented with drugs while young might influence attitudes in subsequent generations.
We agree that it is important for researchers to measure the extent to which the trend toward more permissive attitudes is impacting marijuana consumption. A young person’s attitude about drugs is the strongest single predictor of drug consumption.3,4 When a generation of young people grows more permissive in their views, repercussions may be felt over subsequent decades. Thus, those who came of age during the repeal of alcohol prohibition became a “wet generation” on the forefront of a long wave of rising alcohol consumption in America.5,6 As current generations mature to voting age, views forged during adolescence may drive more liberal drug policy choices by the electorate. The national trend toward more permissive views among young people observed in our study may portend the continuing relaxation of marijuana controls in America.
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