Robert Siegel interviewed Michael Botticelli, acting “Drug Czar” about legalized marijuana in Washington and Colorado. Mr Botticelli cited statistics concerning increased usage by youth since legalization.
Mr Botticelli:
There are no such statistics. Congress has prohibited you or anyone else to gather the data leading to the statistics you cite. If you have gathered such stats, you broke the law.
The impact of legal marijuana in Colorado and Washington is so trivial and recent that there is no way significant conclusions can be reached.
If there were such statistics (and there aren’t) every state in the union would be looking for them, big business would be relying on them, entrepreneurs would be mining them for clues. Instead, everyone is out in space trying to figure this stuff out.
Mr Botticelli, you lied about the data you have. You don’t have such data. No one does.