Pot tale of the week

Youth use declines under legal marijuana

Prohibitionist lawyer Jim Hartman recently wrote in Utah’s St. George Daily Spectrum that “Douglas County keeps commercial marijuana away from their county’s young people, while we legitimize it and make it more accessible to at-risk youth in low income communities like North Las Vegas.”

Hartman does not explain how North Las Vegas is making marijuana “more accessible” to the young, since it remains illegal for the young there as everywhere in the state. But there is a way to reduce young pot use further: Legalize it. Since Colorado reduced the lure of the forbidden, marijuana use by the young in that state has declined steadily and is now at its lowest level in a decade, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.