Minnesota teens are using less cannabis. Some groups are still at higher risk
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Minnesota teenagers are using cannabis at lower rates than they were a decade ago. But researchers and mental health experts say they’re still trying to understand what’s behind the change.
A new University of Minnesota study found the share of high schoolers reporting cannabis use in the past month fell from about 13 percent in 2013 to 5 percent in 2025.
“The biggest takeaway for me was that something's working in terms of reducing cannabis use overall and reducing some disparities,” said Marla Eisenberg, primary author of the University of Minnesota study. “So we need to figure out how we can take some of that positive action and apply it where we did not see reductions in disparities.”
The study did not examine what’s driving the change. Local mental health experts point to changing attitudes toward cannabis and prevention efforts as possible reasons for the decline. But they also say bullying and stress may be contributing to higher rates of cannabis use for some marginalized youth.
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A national decline
The study’s findings are part of a broader national trend. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released this week shows cannabis use in the past 30 days is at an all-time low since the agency began asking youth the question in 1991. Reported use peaked in 1999 at 26.7 percent and was down to 12.9 percent last year.
Still, Eisenberg says she was surprised to see the drop as Minnesota moved into a legal recreational cannabis market for people 21 and older starting in 2023.
“I sort of assumed that when things were being legalized, there would be this uptick and the research has not supported that,” she said.
Eisenberg says the pandemic may have changed how teens socialize, with more interaction shifting online.
“We spend a lot more time on screens,” she said. “Even social time, not physically in person with other people.”
She said young people may also be spending more time in structured, supervised activities and less time hanging out with peers on their own — settings where substance use can occur.
“If those kinds of interactions are happening less frequently, my hunch is that that's contributing to that reduction,” Eisenberg said.
Educating youth on cannabis use
Young people are also using alcohol and tobacco less than before. According to the CDC, high school students who reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days fell from about 51 percent 1991 to 20.3 percent in 2025. In 2024, youth who were vaping was a third of what it was at its peak in 2019.
Heidi Glesmann, a supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Health’s substance use prevention unit, said the decline may reflect both prevention efforts and changing attitudes about substance use.
More youth are seeing the harm in substances like cannabis, which was not as previously thought of,” she said. “So that perception change is usually due to a lot of education.”
Minnesota has also launched Be Cannabis Aware, a state campaign targeting people 25 and younger and the adults in their lives. It provides information about cannabis risks, legal status and alternatives for people who may use cannabis to cope with anxiety, depression or other challenges.
“We really want to be factual and share the risks and harms and what happens when you use cannabis,” Glesmann said. “For those under 21, the primary focus is to use those facts to encourage them not to use the product.”
Frequent, early cannabis use linked to psychosis
Mental health clinicians are concerned about the link between cannabis and psychosis, especially for young people who use frequently or start early. Psychosis is a loss of touch with reality and can include hallucinations or delusions.
Lionel Wininger, chief clinical psychologist at the U of M, works with people who have experienced a first episode of psychosis, including teens and young adults. At one clinic, about a third reported cannabis use when they entered treatment.
Although youth cannabis use is declining overall, Wininger says anecdotally he’s seeing “either the same level of cannabis use or an increase in reported use” among young patients.
“We know that there's actually a kind of special connection between cannabis and psychosis,” he said. “And with that use, and especially increased use and increased high potency use, we're seeing mental health challenges like psychosis as a result of that use.”
Wininger says researchers are still studying whether cannabis can bring out an underlying vulnerability to psychosis. He’s particularly concerned about cannabis-induced psychosis and increasingly potent products.
For patients who are already using cannabis, Wininger takes a harm-reduction approach rather than pushing for abstinence. He says the first step is trying to understand why the person is using cannabis, for example to treat depression, and offering other solutions for that core issue.
“We don't want to scare people away from all of the treatment services we offer: medication management, family support, social support,” he said. “We don't want to scare them away from those services by just taking an abstinence-only approach.”
The decline isn't happening equally
But the decrease in cannabis use hasn’t erased longstanding disparities for Minnesota youth.
American Indian and Alaska Native students, LGBTQ+ students and students experiencing poverty were about three times as likely to report recent cannabis use as their respective comparison groups.
“In a state like Minnesota, where there's a lot of white young people, sometimes disparities get hidden,” Eisenberg said. “What looks like a good trend for the state can really be masking a really different story for other groups of people.”
Some racial and ethnic disparities did narrow, including among Black and Latino youth. But researchers did not see the same reduction in disparities based on sexual orientation, gender identity or poverty.
Eisenberg said bullying may help explain some of those disparities. When researchers accounted for students’ experiences with bullying, the differences in cannabis use became substantially smaller.
“These things are really hurtful, and we know that sometimes kids self-medicate to get through their days,” she said. “So if we can make some change about the bullying, specifically the homophobic, transphobic and racist bullying, we think that will really help address some of these disparities.”
