Teen usage of delta-8 THC, a legal marijuana alternative, is rising
Teen usage of delta-8 THC, a legal marijuana alternative, is on the rise. The new study is one of the first to research how teens use delta-8.
More than 11% of high school seniors report using delta-8 THC — a compound closely related to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana that’s legal in many states thanks to a loophole in the 2018 farm bill — according to a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study, led by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, is one of the first to offer a nationwide snapshot of teenage use of delta-8, a little-researched cannabis product with psychoactive effects that has grown in popularity in recent years.
LauriPatterson / Getty ImagesThe researchers looked at data from the Monitoring the Future survey, a nationwide survey run by the University of Michigan and funded by National Institute on Drug Abuse, which asks adolescents about substance use and attitudes toward drugs. Specifically, the researchers focused on responses from February through June 2023 about delta-8 and marijuana use from nearly 2,000 high school seniors.
Nearly 31% of the high school seniors reported having used marijuana in the past year, and more than 1 in 10 reported having used delta-8 THC.
“We know high school students naturally want to explore and try new ‘exciting’ things, like e-cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana,” said senior study author Adam Leventhal, director of the University of Southern California Institute for Addiction Science. “It’s not surprising that we’re seeing that they’re using delta-8. We just didn’t expect it to be so high.”
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