💸 The Tape

The Centers for Disease Control released its 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey on Monday, and buried in a report about encouraging trends in adolescent health is a number that should end an argument that's been running for fifteen years. 12.9% of U.S. high school students report using marijuana in the past month. In 2011, the year before Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize adult-use cannabis, that figure was 23.1%.

Teen use has fallen by 44% over the exact period in which 24 states and the District of Columbia legalized recreational sales. It's also down from 17% in the CDC's last survey in 2023, so the trend isn't flattening — it's still moving. Lifetime use tells the same story: 39.9% of high schoolers had ever tried cannabis in 2011, versus 25.5% last year.

This isn't one survey

The CDC's data would be notable on its own. What makes it decisive is that every other federal instrument says the same thing. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released in July, put past-year use among 12-to-17-year-olds at 8.7%, down from 14.2% in 2011. NIDA's Monitoring the Future survey, released late last year, found use among eighth, tenth and twelfth graders "remained stable" as legalization spread. The Marijuana Policy Project's review of state-level surveys found youth use declined in 19 of 21 legal states, with an average drop of 35% in the earliest adopters. Two separate JAMA-published analyses found no evidence that either legalization or retail store openings increased teen consumption. Canada's federally funded research reached the same conclusion after that country legalized nationally in 2018.

Different agencies, different methodologies, different countries — one answer. The predicted surge in youth use didn't happen. The opposite did.

Why this matters right now

The timing is not incidental. This data lands while an administrative law judge at the DEA is finalizing a recommendation on whether to move all cannabis to Schedule III, and while the record from the July hearing sits with Administrator Terry Cole. That hearing was, in large part, a fight over exactly this question.

The core of the opposition's case — argued by Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association and their allies — is that cannabis has a "high potential for abuse" that justifies Schedule I, and that loosening federal restrictions will accelerate use among vulnerable populations, meaning teenagers. Their witnesses cited rising potency and emergency room visits. What they could not cite was a national dataset showing youth use going up, because there isn't one.

The eight-factor analysis the DEA applies under the Controlled Substances Act includes the drug's history and current pattern of abuse, the scope and significance of that abuse, and the risk to public health. On each of those factors, the CDC just handed the government its own answer. Fifteen years of state legalization produced the largest decline in adolescent cannabis use on record. That's not an argument for Schedule I. It's the evidentiary basis for dismantling it.

The pattern: reform validates itself

There's a reason these things arrive together, and it's worth understanding the mechanism rather than treating it as coincidence.

Prohibition's central justification has always been protective: keep the drug illegal to keep it away from kids. State legalization tested that theory in real time, across two dozen jurisdictions, with federal agencies collecting the data. Every year the data came back the same way, the protective argument lost force — and the political cost of federal reform dropped. The December 2025 executive order directing rescheduling, the April final rule moving medical cannabis to Schedule III, the DEA hearing on adult-use: none of that happens in a world where youth use is spiking. Legalization produced the evidence that made rescheduling defensible, and rescheduling now proceeds on a record that state legalization built.

The same dynamic runs through the industry's other policy fights. Congress delayed the hemp ban partly because the licensed cannabis industry could point to regulated markets that work. Insurance groups endorsed a cannabis coverage bill last week because a decade of state licensing produced actuarial data. The GAO's banking report, released in August, found no institution has ever been penalized for serving a state-licensed operator — because fifteen years of state-legal commerce generated no enforcement case worth bringing. Reform creates the evidence; the evidence enables the next reform. Teen use is simply the clearest instance of the loop because it was the argument opponents leaned on hardest.

Why use went down

The honest answer is that the research doesn't fully explain the decline, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing. But the mechanisms legalization advocates predicted are consistent with what happened. Licensed retailers check identification; street dealers don't. Regulated markets absorbed adult demand that used to flow through informal networks where teenagers had access. Legalization also shifted cannabis out of the category of rebellious behavior into something adults buy in strip malls next to the dry cleaner, which is not a great advertisement to a sixteen-year-old. And the states that legalized funded prevention and education programs from tax revenue, which prohibition never did.

Whatever the weighting, the direction is not in dispute. NORML's Paul Armentano put it plainly: the claim that legalization drives teen use "is simply not backed by reliable data," and the government's own findings should reassure lawmakers that access can be regulated safely.

What it means for the sector

For operators and investors, this is a durable tailwind, not a one-day headline. The scientific and public-health case against rescheduling has been thin for years, and each federal data release makes it thinner. If the ALJ recommends Schedule III for all cannabis, the litigation that follows — SAM's challenge to the medical rule is already pending in the D.C. Circuit — will be fought on the administrative record, and that record now includes a CDC report showing youth use at the lowest level ever measured. Opponents will need to explain why a drug whose use among minors has halved under regulation belongs in the same category as heroin. They can't, and the courts will notice.

The federal government spent decades warning that legalization would put cannabis in the hands of children. It's now publishing the data that shows regulation did the reverse. That's the whole rescheduling argument in a single chart, and it arrived just in time.

Source: Marijuana Moment

📈 Dog Walkers

$CRDL ( ▼ 6.35% ) Hits Enrollment Early

Cardiol Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CRDL) (TSX: CRDL) enrolled its 110th patient in the pivotal Phase III MAVERIC trial ahead of its end-of-September guidance, then immediately announced it will keep enrolling — up to 150 patients — on the recommendation of the trial's steering committee. Topline data moves from Q1 2027 to mid-2027.

A delay on a Phase III readout normally sends biotech investors reaching for the sell button. This one deserves a closer read. The reason for the expansion is that a blinded review of randomized patients showed fewer pericarditis recurrences than the trial was designed to expect. MAVERIC's primary endpoint is time to first recurrence, an event-driven analysis. If events come in slower than modeled, the statistics need more patients to preserve power — regardless of which arm those events are landing in.

Nobody has unblinded anything, and CEO David Elsley is careful to say only that the finding is "encouraging." But there are two explanations for a lower-than-expected recurrence rate in a placebo-controlled trial: either the placebo arm is unusually healthy, or the drug arm is doing what it's supposed to do. Elsley notes the company isn't aware of any change in clinical practice that would explain the former. The steering committee expanding the study rather than pausing it tells you which way they're leaning.

The endpoint design tracks the pivotal trial for Arcalyst, the only FDA-approved therapy for recurrent pericarditis, which gives CardiolRx a clean regulatory comparator and Orphan Drug Designation already in hand. Cash runway extends into Q1 2028, meaning the expansion doesn't require another raise before data — a meaningful point for a company that just filed a US$150 million shelf.

A three-month slip in exchange for a more powered trial and a hint that recurrences are scarce is a trade most Phase III sponsors would take.

📺 Trade To Black

Cannabis Stocks: Trulieve and Curaleaf Join Major Indices | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• Trulieve ($TRLV) was added to the S&P Total Market and Completion Indices (and healthcare sub-indices) after its NYSE listing; Curaleaf ($CURLF) joined the FTSE Canada All Cap, its second major Canadian benchmark. The point isn’t a one-day pop — it’s a mechanical bid from passive funds that couldn’t own these names before.

• GTI announced a $50M cash-flow buyback, Green Thumb saw strong volume even after insider selling, Boris Jordan’s $5 Aurora offer was rejected, and High Tide’s U.S. ambitions came up.

• NuggMD poll of 535 people: 29% hide cannabis use from everyone at work, underscoring leftover stigma even in legal markets.

• Michael Bronstein (ATACH) on his D.C. fly-in: Congress still mixes up hemp THC and marijuana THC, Farm Bill language is stalled, and the preferred path is one clear regulated system for THC rather than another messy hemp ban.