Smoking weed isn’t a new problem, but a more potent one, and changes the definition of what “high school” is supposed to be.
The Wall Street Journal (News+ link), starting off their story with what seems like a scene straight out of the movies:
It was 10:09 and 22 seconds on a Friday morning at Liberty High School when an alert dinged on James Geis’s phone: “High Vape Index.”
He dashed out of the administrative building and jumped into a golf cart, racing across the school’s sprawling campus to the location identified in the alert, the “E” girls’ bathroom. Within minutes he was outside the door.
A girl walked out. “Can I talk to you? Was there anyone else in there with you?” said Geis, one of the school’s campus supervisors tasked with combating marijuana use—or what many Liberty students call “narcs.”
Two more girls walked out. Geis told the students that a vape sensor went off. “What would happen if I ran?” one said.
“We would get you when you come back,” Geis responded.
She didn’t run. Geis ushered the students to a conference room where Liberty’s principal, Efa Huckaby, searched their backpacks. Hand sanitizer, folders, perfume, a pair of black leggings. Empty chips bags. He had the girls, two seniors and one freshman, turn their jeans’ pockets inside out and patted down the hoods of their sweatshirts. One of the students spoke slowly and seemed glassy-eyed.
Another campus supervisor, Brad Ainsworth, hung back to search the empty bathroom. Eventually, he found an empty box for a vape cartridge stuffed under a bag lining a metal trash receptacle.
Everywhere I go I can smell weed, even right outside the hospital. It’s not surprising that schools also have increased usage. Meanwhile, High Times argues that marijuana use is going down, even quoting the Wall Street Journal’s survey statistics:
Let’s get the obvious part out of the way. Teen cannabis use is real. The risks are real. THC can be harmful to developing brains, and schools have every right to care about what students are doing on campus. But that is not the same as proving legalization created some brand-new youth cannabis crisis. That leap is where the piece gets slippery.
Because once you leave the anecdote and look at the trendline, the panic starts to wobble. The University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future report shows past-year marijuana use among 12th graders at 26.0% in 2024, down from 35.7% in 2019. Among 8th graders, it was 7.0% in 2024, down from 11.8% in 2019. That is not an explosion. That is a decline.
While different news outlets will argue whether it should be illegal to smoke and how widespread the issue might be, no one can deny the barrier to entry has declined significantly since I went to high school back in the 90s:
It was a process to smoke weed. You had to first acquire it without the aid of a cellphone where you are in constant communication with your “source.”
You had to prep it with tools and “roll your own joints,” which apparently is a skill many of today’s youth don’t have or need because a vape is much easier to use and masks the smell from teachers.
And who would know best if use has actually gone down except teenagers themselves (WSJ continues):
But some Liberty students said they don’t think weed use has really gone down. The school’s focus on the bathrooms has just pushed it to other spots, both on campus and off. A major hot spot for weed and nicotine is the stairwell of a parking garage next to the school. “Anytime you go over there, I see a herd of them puffing,” said Blunt, the Liberty senior.
Some teens are brazen enough to do it in class, Blunt said, while a group of her fellow students nodded in agreement. Some will hide vape pens in the sleeves of their shirts and hoodies and take a discreet puff when the teacher isn’t looking.
And if the teacher is showing a video in class, it is a free-for-all, said Trimua. “If the lights are off, the smoke is on,” he said.
Let’s not forget the surveys given in high school are also a horrible way to determine true accuracy of increase or decrease in usage. Many students skew the results by trolling the polls and do speed clicks to get the survey over with, selecting any answer at random:
But a new research paper points out one huge potential flaw in all this research: kids who skew the results by making stuff up for a giggle. "Mischievous Responders," they're called.
They may say they're 7 feet tall, or weigh 400 pounds, or have three children. They may exaggerate their sexual experiences, or lie about their supposed criminal activities. In other words, kids will be kids, especially when you ask them about sensitive issues.
Jackson Terry, 14, says he answered honestly when he took one of these surveys last year, but he knows kids who didn't.
"They handed out the sheet, I believe it was in language class," says Terry, who's from Granville, Ohio. "The teacher was in the room. It was anonymous. I think they asked us about bullying, do you feel safe in school, some questions about drugs, the learning environment."
Some kids "would joke through the entire thing and have a cocky attitude about it," Terry says. "Afterwards some would say, yeah, No. 5, that's totally not true; I just made something up."
New York Times also describes how the potency of THC has increased dramatically from 4% to 90% in some cases (gift link):
Today’s cannabis is far more potent than the pot that preceded legalization. In 1995, the marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4 percent THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90 percent or more. As the cliché goes, this is not your parents’ weed. It is as if some beer brands were still sold as beer but contained as much alcohol per ounce as whiskey.
This extremely potent version of THC can lead to psychosis, even with a single dose, destroying the future of countless children and adults.
“Stats” might say use is declining, but I beg to differ.