Tight regulation of marijuana needed in Massachusetts to protect youth

There’s reason for both enthusiasm and caution when it comes to the state law that will legalize marijuana for those for those age 21 and older that was approved November 8, 2016 by Massachusetts voters, according to a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health tobacco expert.

While it’s good that there should be fewer drug-related arrests because of the law— along with the racial disparities that sometimes accompany those arrests —Massachusetts needs strict marijuana regulations to protect youth, Vaughan Rees, director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control and lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School, said in a November 14, 2016 Boston Magazine article on the law’s public health implications.

“I’m delighted that we’re going to see an end to young people being criminalized and facing jail sentences or prison sentences, and having a criminal record which will impact them, perhaps for life,” Rees said.

However, he noted that without tight regulation, the marijuana industry, like the tobacco industry, could “target the youth of Massachusetts with their products to get them hooked, so they will become good customers and use their products, potentially to the detriment of their own health.”

Read the Boston Magazine article: Public Health Experts Have Mixed Feelings About Legal Marijuana in Massachusetts

Read the American College of Pediatricians’ April 2016 statement: Marijuana Use: Detrimental to Youth

Read the National Institute on Drug Abuse report: Principles of Adolescent Substance Use Disorder Treatment: A Research-Based Guide

Learn more

Legalizing Marijuana: The Public Health Pros and Cons (The Forum at Harvard Chan)

Cumulative lifetime use of marijuana found to impact verbal memory in middle age (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies News)