(HealthDay)—Today’s American teens are smoking less than ever, and the trend may be keeping many from smoking pot, too.
That’s the finding of a new study that tracked more than 1 million teens from 1991 to 2016.
But the news wasn’t all good, the researchers said. Kids who think marijuana is “safe” are more likely than their peers to use the drug. That’s a concern because more and more, teenagers do believe pot is fairly harmless—and experts say it’s not.
The findings paint a nuanced picture.
It’s known that U.S. teenagers’ pot use has held fairly steady over the past decade—even though kids have become increasingly more likely to believe the drug is harmless.
And that’s puzzling, said Richard Miech, a research professor at the University of Michigan who led the new study.
There’s good evidence, he explained, that when teens believe pot is safe, they’re more likely to use it in the next year.
Miech and his colleagues wanted to…