A point-by-point look at SAM’s New York report finds a familiar pattern: selective data, overstated conclusions and a weaker case than advertised.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) has released another report criticizing legal cannabis—this time focused on New York. As with past publications, the report relies heavily on selective data points and narrow timeframes to advance conclusions that do not fully reflect the broader body of available evidence.
Rather than engaging in speculation or rhetoric, this response examines SAM’s claims directly—placing the cited data in proper context and comparing it against long-term trends, peer-reviewed research, and outcomes observed across other legal jurisdictions.
What follows is a point-by-point, evidence-based analysis of SAM’s New York 2025 Impact Report on legal cannabis.
If you are a cannabis advocate, journalist, policymaker, or health professional, you are welcome to reference this analysis when evaluating claims about legalization and public health.
For readers who wish to review the source material directly, SAM’s report—“Legal Marijuana in New York State”—is available here.
Note: This analysis focuses on how SAM presents and interprets public data, not on assigning motive.
Let’s begin.
Anti-Prohibition Claims vs. Evidence
Youth Use Increase
SAM argues that legalization “spurred” increased youth cannabis use, pointing to modest year-over-year changes in New York survey data. Those figures do reflect real survey responses, but interpreting them as evidence of a meaningful trend requires broader context.
SAM’s own cited New York figures describe relatively small short-term shifts rather than a clear structural break. On their own, such changes do not show that legalization caused youth use to rise, especially when similar up-and-down movement appears across multiple legal states over time.
That broader pattern matters. As the chart below shows, states such as Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Nevada, and Massachusetts all experienced year-to-year fluctuations in youth cannabis use after legalization, including occasional increases followed by stabilization or decline. In other words, isolated movement in a single survey cycle is not unusual—and is not, by itself, strong evidence of a legalization-driven surge.
| Year | Youth Cannabis Use | Change vs. Prior Entry | |
| COLORADO | 2011 | 22.0% | — |
| 2013 | 19.7% | −2.3 pp | |
| 2015 | 21.2% | 1.5 pp | |
| 2017 | 19.4% | −1.8 pp | |
| 2019 | 20.6% | 1.2 pp | |
| 2021 | 13.3% | −7.3 pp | |
| 2023 | 12.8% | −0.5 pp | |
| WASHINGTON | 2010 | 20.0% | — |
| 2012 | 19.3% | −0.7 pp | |
| 2014 | 18.1% | −1.2 pp | |
| 2016 | 17.2% | −0.9 pp | |
| 2018 | 17.9% | 0.7 pp | |
| 2021 | 7.2% | −10.7 pp | |
| 2023 | 8.4% | 1.2 pp | |
| OREGON | 2013 | 20.9% | — |
| 2015 | 19.1% | −1.8 pp | |
| 2017 | 20.9% | 1.8 pp | |
| 2019 | 20.4% | −0.5 pp | |
| 2020 | 13.5% | −6.9 pp | |
| 2022 | 12.0% | −1.5 pp | |
| CALIFORNIA | 2013 | 18% | — |
| 2015 | 16% | −2 pp | |
| 2017 | 16% | 0 pp | |
| 2019 | 12% | −4 pp | |
| ALASKA | 2013 | 19.7% | — |
| 2015 | 19.0% | −0.7 pp | |
| 2017 | 21.5% | 2.5 pp | |
| 2019 | 21.5% | 0 pp | |
| 2023 | 17.9% | −3.6 pp | |
| NEVADA | 2015 | 19.3% | — |
| 2017 | 17.9% | −1.4 pp | |
| 2019 | 19.8% | 1.9 pp | |
| 2021 | 16.3% | −3.5 pp | |
| 2023 | 14.7% | −1.6 pp | |
| MASSACHUSSETS | 2015 | 24.5% | — |
| 2017 | 24.1% | −0.4 pp | |
| 2019 | 26.0% | 1.9 pp | |
| 2021 | 16.6% | −9.4 pp | |
| 2023 | 18.6% | 2.0 pp |
All data in this table were drawn from state-level government surveys compiled by the Marijuana Policy Project in their report “Adult Use Legalization Corresponds With Drop In Teen Marijuana Use” (updated 2025), available here.
When youth cannabis use data is examined across multiple legal states over longer timeframes, a consistent pattern appears: usage rates fluctuate modestly from year to year regardless of legalization status.
Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Nevada, and Massachusetts all display this dynamic—small increases in certain survey cycles followed by stabilization or decline in subsequent years.
Importantly, the best available evidence has not shown a consistent legalization-driven increase in youth use across these states. Several show long-term declines beginning around the mid-to-late 2010s.
Quite the opposite. Turns out legalization is the best way to protect youngsters from cannabis abuse. Nationally, youth marijuana use has also trended downward over the past decade.
If future New York data follow patterns observed in other states, year-to-year variability is likely to continue without necessarily indicating a structural increase linked to legalization.
Public Health
SAM is right that cannabis is not risk-free, but its report tends to present emerging risk signals as if causality and population-wide effects were already settled.
Newer research does suggest that cannabis use—especially frequent use and inhaled or combusted use—is associated with elevated cardiovascular risk. Some recent studies have also linked early-onset, frequent adolescent cannabis use to greater later healthcare utilization for both mental and physical health conditions.
At the same time, much of this evidence remains observational, exposure measures are often imprecise, and researchers continue to note unresolved confounding variables. Population-level legalization data do not justify sweeping claims of a generalized public-health collapse.
The more defensible conclusion is that legalization should be paired with strong warnings, youth prevention strategies, product safeguards, and ongoing surveillance—not that the existence of a regulated market, by itself, proves catastrophic health effects.
In short, the broader research landscape supports caution, regulation and honest risk communication. It does not support panic dressed up as certainty.
Racial Equity
SAM argues that legalization worsens racial inequity by pointing to differences in usage or treatment rates among demographic groups.
This framing overlooks the central historical driver of racial inequity in cannabis policy: enforcement.
Prior to legalization, Black and white Americans used cannabis at similar rates, yet Black communities experienced disproportionately higher arrest and conviction rates under prohibition.
Legalization and decriminalization have been associated with substantial reductions in these disparities. Criminal justice research shows marked declines in Black–White arrest gaps for cannabis possession following reform.
Available survey data do not show a disproportionate post-reform increase in youth cannabis use among Black teens, and some broader trend data show declines over time.
Focusing narrowly on usage rates risks obscuring the primary inequity legalization was designed to address: racially uneven criminalization.
Illicit Market
SAM contends that legalization “supercharged” illegal sales, citing the prevalence of unlicensed shops in New York City.
That reading skips the most obvious part of the story: newly legal markets are messy before they mature.
More recent state data show that New York’s legal market has continued to expand rapidly. The state reported $1.69 billion in 2025 retail sales, and by March 5, 2026, regulators said total reported retail sales had reached $2.97 billion.
As of that March update, New York also reported 599 legal dispensaries open statewide and 2,161 adult-use licenses issued. Those figures do not mean the illicit market has disappeared, but they do show the regulated market gaining scale as legal access improves.
New York’s current conditions reflect implementation challenges—including licensing delays, uneven enforcement, and the complexity of building a market at this scale—rather than an inherent flaw in legalization itself.
Based on outcomes observed elsewhere and the state’s own recent growth, expanded legal availability remains more likely to reduce illicit market share over time than to entrench it permanently.
Fiscal Performance
SAM characterizes cannabis tax revenue as underwhelming, but that assessment now omits newer published state data showing substantial year-over-year growth.
According to New York’s 2025 Office of Cannabis Management annual report, combined state and local cannabis taxes from the adult-use and medical programs reached $340.6 million from April 1, 2023 through November 30, 2025.
That same report states that cannabis-related taxes, fees, and fines rose from $80.2 million in FY 2023–24 to $164.8 million in FY 2024–25, with $134.6 million already recorded in FY 2025–26 through November 30, 2025.
Separately, New York’s Department of Taxation and Finance reports $241 million in calendar-year cannabis collections for 2025, up from $124 million in 2024 and $25 million in 2023.
In addition to tax receipts, legalization reduces enforcement and incarceration costs associated with cannabis prohibition—an economic factor often excluded from revenue-focused critiques. Taken together, the available figures suggest a market that is still ramping up, not one that has fiscally stalled.
What the Evidence Shows
When evaluated against long-term datasets and peer-reviewed research, many of SAM’s conclusions appear to overreach or plainly attempt to deny the available evidence.
National and international evidence does not show a consistent legalization-driven increase in youth use, while legal-market expansion and enforcement reform have generally been associated with reduced illicit reliance over time and meaningful reductions in racially disparate enforcement.
Small fluctuations and isolated data points are not proof of policy failure. Read the evidence in full, and SAM’s case looks far less definitive than its report suggests.
This analysis is intended to help journalists, policymakers, and health professionals engage with cannabis policy debates using evidence rather than alarm.
If you made it this far, let us know which report or claim should be examined next.
Photo by Afif Ramdhasuma on Unsplash
