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
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