"Ohio Principals' Perspectives on How Adult-Use Marijuana May Impact Schools and Students"

The title of this post is the title of this terrific new report now available via SSRN and authored by Peter Leasure Jana Hrdinova with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center.   Here is the report's abstract:

Over the last decade, significant effort has been devoted to examining whether the legalization of recreational cannabis leads to higher rates of use among youth given that some research links adolescent marijuana use with various negative educational, health, and safety outcomes.  Although some national survey results over the last decade suggest that current marijuana use among high school students has decreased, the concern about youth use remains (especially in jurisdictions that have recently legalized marijuana for recreational use).  The goal of the current study was to explore current issues with student marijuana use in Ohio’s K-12 schools and anticipated future issues given the recent legalization of adult-use marijuana in Ohio.

In December 2023, before any recreational marijuana was available for sale in the state of Ohio, an online survey was distributed to Ohio’s K-12 principals that covered three general areas: current student behavior with respect to marijuana, anticipated impact of marijuana legalization on students, and anticipated impact of marijuana legalization on schools and its policies.  The results indicated notable agreement among principals that current marijuana use on school premises and away from school premises was perceived as a problem.  Principals also reported high levels of concern about the anticipated impact of cannabis legalization on their students with respect to increased marijuana use among students, increased physical and mental health issues, negative impact on academic performance, and negative impact on students’ behavior at school.  While the results generally showed higher levels of agreement about expected negative impacts among principals at high schools and middle schools, elementary school principals still noted modest to high levels of concern for many questions.  Given those results, it is not surprising that many principals stated that they would likely increase education about the negative effects of marijuana use. Further, over 80% of principals noted that more funding should be provided to Ohio schools for marijuana-specific education now that recreational marijuana is legalized in Ohio.