Federal Agency Gives Anti-Marijuana Group A Platform To Make Claims About Legalization’s Impact That Aren’t Supported By Data

A federal health agency on Monday hosted a leading marijuana prohibitionist
group for an event focused on cannabis use trends and youth prevention,
giving the organization a prominent platform for a discussion that largely
promoted an anti-reform agenda.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA)
invited Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), to
speak at a webinar on cannabis-related emergency incidents, the “potential
negative impacts of state legalization” and methods of deterring youth
usage.

The conversation skewed heavily toward the prohibition side of the cannabis
reform debate, with Rear Admiral Christopher Jones, the director of
SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, opening by overviewing data
on “an upward trajectory of marijuana use” and its potential harms.

“What we hope to do today is sort of unpack some of the data that are
underneath these trends,” he said. “But certainly the recent uptick is
concerning as we look at past-month marijuana use.”

While Jones acknowledged that youth cannabis usage in recent years as more
states have legalized cannabis have been “a little bit flatter” compared to
rising use rates for adults, there was no discussion about how that might
be related to the enactment of regulated markets for adults, which require
IDs to ensure that underage people are not accessing the products. A
question about the issue submitted by Marijuana Moment during the event was
not addressed.

Sabet, for his part, accused pro-legalization advocates and industry
stakeholders of selectively promoting data around youth consumption trends
to demonstrate that legalization is not associated with an increase among
that cohort.

“What you will find the industry often do is cherry pick some of those
studies and find one or two states in the timeframe that suits them to show
that there was a decrease—you know, remarkably worse there—or there was no
increase, they often say, because it’s even hard for them to say there’s a
decrease,” Sabet said. “That’s almost impossible. But they can finagle the
numbers to say that there was no increase.”

SAMHSA’s just this summer put out data showing that youth cannabis
consumption has remained stable amid the state legalization movement.

The agency also held a webinar in July in which a Johns Hopkins University
researcher acknowledged that while self-reported cannabis consumption by
adults has risen as more states have legalized, use by youth has generally
remained flat or fallen.

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. The report cited
data from a series of national and state-level youth surveys, including the
annual Monitoring the Future (MTF) Survey, which is supported by the
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

But Sabet held firm on his position that the industry is promoting a false
narrative around the issue.

“We have a playbook for this misinformation and it’s called Big Tobacco. We
had misinformation from the tobacco industry for decades, and
unfortunately, we’ve seen this with the prescription drug pharmaceutical
industry,” Sabet said. “We see this with the alcohol industry, of
course—but we of course see this with any other for profit industry that
says that. And now we see this with the cannabis industry. So that’s why we
shouldn’t be very we shouldn’t be shocked.”

Only SAMHSA and SAM’s representatives presented to the audience, which was
comprised of dozens of medical health professionals and students across the
country. SAMHSA itself spoke glowingly of SAM’s work in its promotion of
the webinar, saying it would give the audience an opportunity to learn
about its “ongoing activities and initiatives to address the harmful
effects of cannabis use.”

At one point at the event, SAMHSA’s Jones shared a slide about “deaths
involving cannabis,” with a chart that suggested marijuana associated with
more than 45 deaths per 100,000 people as of 2023. The presenters didn’t
say cannabis was the sole cause of death, but the discussion about
marijuana-related mortality was consistent with the anti-cannabis tone of
the webinar.

Sabet also contested the argument that legalization at the state level can
mitigate the illicit market, claiming that illegal sales have not been
“greatly diminished” after states enacted the reform.

That isn’t the consensus perspective, however. Last year, for example, a
United Nations (UN) report on worldwide drug trends acknowledged that marijuana
legalization in the U.S. and Canada likely helped to shrink the size of
illicit markets, while at the same time driving significant drops in the
number of people arrested for cannabis offenses.

And when states with legalization on the books allow localities to opt out
of having licensed cannabis businesses, studies in states like California
have shown those ongoing prohibitions help sustain illicit markets.

“We’ve actually seen that it’s intertwined with the legal market. So there
isn’t this separation of, ‘Well, there’s the legal guys and the illegal
guys.’ We’re seeing a lot of blending,” Sabet said. “We’re seeing that
transnational criminal organizations know how to diversify. We’re seeing
the foreign governments, including the Chinese government, knowingly get
involved in marijuana production.”

“That is, you know, extremely, extremely concerning,” he said.

“So, you know, one thing I will say is, I think the tide really is turning.
We’re seeing the United States, in some ways, reject legalization more than
they have in the past,” he said, referring to the recent defeat of several
state ballot measures.

The conversation took place amid heightened expectations about an imminent
decision on a marijuana rescheduling proposal that President Donald Trump
said last month would come soon. SAM is staunchly opposed to that modest
reform, which would not federally legalize cannabis.


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Meanwhile, Trump recently signed an executive order that’s received
pushback from the drug policy reform community over directives targeting
target harm reduction efforts and, specifically, safe consumption programs.

Among the order’s directives is that the secretary of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) must “ensure that discretionary grants
issued by SAMHSA for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and
recovery fund evidence-based programs and do not fund programs that fail to
achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called ‘harm reduction’ or ‘safe
consumption’ efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its
attendant harm.”

SAM, for its part, recently organized a letter with nine GOP congressional
lawmakers, calling on the U.S. attorney general to reject what they called
a “corrupt and flawed” marijuana rescheduling proposal.

The anti-cannabis group also led a letter last month with a coalition of
prohibitionist, law enforcement and religious groups, imploring Trump to
oppose the cannabis rescheduling proposal and leave the drug in Schedule I.

*Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.*

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Claims About Legalization’s Impact That Aren’t Supported By Data appeared
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