She first smoked cannabis with friends after school, stealing the drug from a stash belonging to adults who weren’t home, said Valpey, who is now 28, nine months sober, a licensed esthetician, owner of a thriving business and a wife.

In hindsight, Valpey believes her habit, among other things, hurt her grades, curtailed her participation in school activities, triggered fatigue and caused anxiety.

Valpey started using cannabis in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley before recreational sales became legal in Washington in 2012. But she said she found more access to the drug once cannabis stores opened in Clarkston even though she never purchased it from one of the state-licensed retailers when she was underage.

Information Washington state agencies have collected and research they have completed since recreational sales of cannabis became legal indicate the drug can be related to troubling issues for adolescents and teens who use it, like Valpey did.

Impaired learning for as long as 28 days after the last hit for weekly users and suicidal ideation for daily users are among the health conditions adolescents could encounter, according to the website of the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board.

Despite the potential risks, monitoring health impacts of cannabis on adolescents has gaps. Meanwhile, legal sales of the drug skyrocket and some worry the product is getting into the hands of teens through indirect channels.

The parameters of legal cannabis

Total annual sales in Asotin County’s three retail cannabis stores were four times larger in 2024 compared to the first full year of legal sales in that jurisdiction more than a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation. Overall state sales rose by 87%. (See accompanying graphic.)

Lewiston and Clarkston police believe teenagers are using some of that cannabis, even though retailers comply with a ban on sales to anyone under the age of 21 and a Washington state survey shows a decline in youth use.

In contrast, Matt Plemmons, an owner of Greenfield Cannabis in Clarkston, thinks legalization has not made cannabis more accessible to adolescents and teens.

“Legalization has made it safer,” he said. “We developed a highly, strictly regulated market that checks everybody’s IDs, every time, no matter what. Illicit dealers did not check. They didn’t care if you were not 21 years old.”

If teenagers are hanging around his business, employees call law enforcement, Plemmons said.

Youth cannabis prevention should be a collaboration of “everybody, parents, schools, health care providers and state regulators,” Plemmons said. “The industry side is strict compliance (with all state laws).”

Still, the safeguards Plemmons described don’t stop young people from paying adults to buy cannabis from the state stores or stealing cannabis from adult relatives and friends, said Clarkston police officers, educators and students.

A sign posted outside Canna4Life Cannabis Dispensary in Clarkston warns that the penalties for adults purchasing cannabis for minors are as much as 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. But prosecutions in Asotin County for the felony are infrequent, likely between six to 12 cases since 2000, said Asotin County Prosecutor Curt Liedkie.

Obtaining evidence is difficult. Kids typically don’t come forward. Absent officers witnessing transactions or finding text messages, the cases are challenging to prosecute, he said.

“We take it very seriously,” Liedkie said.

That reality is widely known in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, where Asotin County’s three stores are within a 10-minute walk of CHS, said Caden Massey, coordinator of Clarkston EPIC (Empowering People Inspiring Change), a Washington state-funded program.

Massey’s group made the signs posted at Canna4Life, one of its many efforts to help teens struggling with mental health and academic issues.

“I know people who have purchased weed for younger people, and their perception is ‘Nothing is going to happen. I’m of legal age,’ “ Massey said.

All of the stores are at least 1,000 feet away from schools, libraries, parks, daycares and arcades, in compliance with state rules, and even closer to the police department, making it easy for officers to monitor the retailers, Plemmons said.

The physical separation of the stores from places where teens gather is just part of the issue.

Teenagers who are curious, but who haven’t used the drug, window shop the retailers online, browsing hundreds of products, and then tell whoever is buying for them exactly what they want, said one Clarkston High School student.

Once again, Plemmons has a different take. Customers can only order products on his website, he notes. All purchases happen at the store where everyone is carded.

Parents and teachers can use the website as a resource to learn about cannabis to help them refine prevention strategies, he said.

“I’ve had teachers come (to Greenfield) and given them a full breakdown of what everything looks like,” Plemmons said.

In some families, teenagers obtain cannabis in their homes, said John Morbeck, a Clarkston police officer who was in charge of the community’s youth drug prevention program when state-licensed cannabis stores debuted in Asotin County.

Before that, everyone kept it out of sight, he said.

“(Parents) didn’t want their kids to go to school and say, ‘Hey, Mom and Dad are smoking pot.’ So it wasn’t available to (kids),” Morbeck said. “As soon as the legal part changed, that’s when stuff at the schools started increasing.”

The Washington CannaBusiness Association asserts underage access to cannabis is happening through a different route.

There’s a thriving illicit market online where kids can purchase untested, unregulated and untaxed cannabis products like hemp-derived THC, according to an email from the association.

Valpey’s experience mirrors what law enforcement shared.

She said she had more access to cannabis when the state-licensed stores opened even though she hadn’t turned 21 years old.

“If you had an older sibling or friend, you could convince them to go in and get it for you,” Valpey said.

Data is lacking

Just as it’s difficult to know how widespread access to cannabis from state-licensed stores is to teenagers and others who are underage through indirect channels, it’s also unclear the magnitude of any health issues caused by unauthorized availability of the drug.

Washington does not have a dedicated surveillance system that tracks the health impacts of youth cannabis in a systematic way, said Ryan McLaughlin, an associate professor at Washington State University who is co-director of the school’s Cannabis Research Center, in an email.

The lack of coordinated monitoring is widely acknowledged, McLaughlin said, and is a reason researchers at WSU and across the state emphasize the need for stronger public health tracking, particularly as the potency and variety of products have risen.

Plemmons agrees.

“Public policy should be informed by as much reliable data as possible,” Plemmons said. “That will help regulators refine our strategies to prevent use among minors.”

One effective strategy, Plemmons said, is distributing free lock boxes to customers at cannabis retailers, something EPIC sponsors.

Source: https://www.lmtribune.com/local-news/youth-and-cannabis-whats-the-risk-21338411/