Youth marijuana use continues to decline in 2025 across Colorado, and other legalized states—including Arizona— challenging baseless fears about cannabis legalization.
Is youth marijuana use still declining as of 2025? Recent data suggest the answer is yes. In fact, survey results from Colorado – one of the earliest states to legalize adult-use cannabis – continue to show no surge in teen marijuana consumption a decade into legalization. If anything, the trend is downward.
This Colorado experience aligns with broader national patterns seen across legalized markets. Below, we’ll dive into Colorado’s latest findings, take a brief look at nationwide trends, and then zoom in on Arizona to see how local youth usage compares.
Colorado’s Latest Data: Teen Cannabis Use Keeps Falling
Colorado’s first recreational cannabis shops opened in 2014 under strict regulations, and new data show that youth marijuana use has actually declined since legalization.
According to the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey (HKCS), only about 12.8% of Colorado high school students reported using marijuana in the past 30 days in 2023, a slight drop from 13.3% in 2021 and down significantly from pre-legalization levels. By comparison, in 2013 – the year before retail shops opened – nearly 19.7% of high schoolers were past-month users.
These findings contradict early fears that legalization would lead to increased underage use.
Notably, Colorado’s teen cannabis use is now at its lowest rate in at least a decade. State officials credit rigorous preventive measures and industry oversight for this positive outcome.
Under Colorado’s regulated system, youth access to marijuana has become more restricted. Only about 40% of teens in 2023 said marijuana would be easy to get – a sharp decline from 55% in 2013.
Compliance checks also confirm that licensed dispensaries are largely keeping cannabis out of minors’ hands: in 2023, regulators conducted 285 undercover underage purchase attempts and recorded only 4 failures – a 99% compliance rate in denying sales to minors.
This strong enforcement of ID checks, combined with education campaigns funded by marijuana tax revenue, appears to be mitigating youth access and use in Colorado.
Nationwide Trends: Post-Legalization Youth Use Down or Stable
Across the United States, the trendlines tell a story that runs counter to the fears once stoked by cannabis prohibitionists: youth marijuana use has not surged in the wake of legalization. In fact, national data show that teen use is either holding steady or dropping in most legal states.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, about 17 percent of U.S. high school students reported using marijuana in the past month as of 2023. That marks a notable decline from the 23 percent recorded in 2013, just as the first states began rolling out adult-use cannabis programs.
While individual years may fluctuate, the overall direction has been consistently downward. The decline over this legalization decade directly challenges the longstanding argument that legal adult-use markets would inevitably lead to more youth exposure.
That argument also fails under closer examination at the state level. A 2024 report from the Marijuana Policy Project found that in 19 of the 21 states with available pre- and post-legalization data, teen marijuana use actually dropped after legalization took effect.
The remaining two states saw usage rates hold steady. In other words, the vast majority of jurisdictions that have embraced regulated cannabis have not seen any spike in adolescent consumption. Instead, they’ve seen modest but meaningful declines.
Federal data back this up. The long-running Monitoring the Future survey, administered by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, reports that past-month marijuana use among 8th, 10th and 12th graders has declined between 28 and 46 percent since 2012. That year marked the beginning of adult-use legalization, starting with Colorado and Washington.
Not only are fewer teens reporting use, but cannabis itself is becoming less accessible to them. In 2011, roughly 68 percent of 10th graders said marijuana was easy to obtain; by 2024, that figure had fallen to just 41 percent.
Academic and epidemiological research has echoed these findings. A 2019 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no statistically significant link between recreational marijuana laws and adolescent use rates.
The Centers for Disease Control has noted the same pattern, citing falling teen use even as the number of legal markets continues to grow. And in late 2022, the director of epidemiological research at NIDA acknowledged that teen marijuana use had not increased meaningfully under legalization.
The data, the studies, and the expert consensus all point in the same direction: a well-regulated adult-use cannabis system does not fuel teen consumption. If anything, it coincides with better access controls, stronger public education efforts, and healthier behavior trends among adolescents.
Arizona’s Youth Marijuana Use: A Local Perspective
Arizona legalized recreational marijuana for adults (21+) in late 2020, with retail sales beginning in early 2021. If the national trends hold, one would expect no spike in teen use here. Indeed, Arizona’s own youth surveys show declining or steady marijuana use among teens in recent years, rather than any increase.
The Arizona Youth Survey (AYS), a statewide survey of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders conducted every two years, reveals a significant downward trend in cannabis use. In the 2020 AYS (just before legalization took effect), about 13.4% of students reported using marijuana in the past 30 days (across the grades surveyed). By the 2022 survey, that figure had dropped to 10.2%, and in the latest 2024 survey it fell to just 7.4%.
In other words, the rate of current teen marijuana use in Arizona was almost cut in half from 2020 to 2024. This decline was observed at every grade level surveyed – for example, past-month use among 10th graders went from 14.1% in 2020 down to 7.8% in 2024, and among 12th graders from 20.7% down to 14.1%.
Arizona youth are also using other substances like alcohol and e-cigarettes less than before, indicating a broad positive trend in teen substance use behavior.
State and local officials have welcomed these findings. The Arizona Criminal Justice Commission noted in its 2024 report that the survey results are “promising” and show fewer youth engaging in substance use overall.
Public health and education leaders attribute the progress to effective prevention programs, increased awareness of risks, and the strict enforcement of age limits under legalization.
Just as in Colorado, legal cannabis in Arizona is tightly controlled – dispensaries must check IDs and cannot sell to anyone under 21 – and this regulated environment may be helping to reduce underage access. Community coalitions in Arizona have also stepped up youth education about marijuana and other drugs, which likely contributes to the downward trend.
As of 2025, youth marijuana use continues to decline or remain low in jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis. Colorado’s newest data reaffirm that teen usage rates are lower now than before legalization, debunking the notion that legalization encourages youth to start using marijuana.
Nationally and in most legal-cannabis states, surveys show no surge in teen marijuana use – if anything, the trend has been one of gradual decline amid increased regulation and education.
In Arizona, early indications follow the same pattern: youth cannabis use has not spiked since legalization; in fact, our state’s teen usage rates have dropped in recent years.
All this evidence should reassure policymakers and the public that responsible cannabis legalization can coexist with falling youth use rates – and continued vigilance in prevention and enforcement can keep this encouraging trend going.
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