Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently went on air to voice his concerns about teens and marijuana. In particular, he said he is more concerned about youth consumption of marijuana than he is nicotine. Interestingly, recent data shows that there are roughly twice as many teens who vape nicotine than those who vape marijuana.

Gottlieb’s Comments

Earlier today, Gottlieb discussed marijuana use among teens while being interviewed by CNBC. Many of his comments focused on what he claims is an alarming uptick of marijuana consumption among young people.

“I’m worried about the inhalation of a product and the risks associated with that,” he said. “I’m worried about the perception that somehow there’s no risks associated with youth use of the product.”

A short time later, he began comparing teen consumption of cannabis to teen use of nicotine. Initially, he seemed to frame them both as equally risky: “I think we all need to be deeply concerned about that in the same way we’re deeply concerned about youth access to e-cigarettes and nicotine.”

But then he made a sudden shift. He ended up arguing that cannabis consumption among teens is more worrisome than nicotine: “We should be even more concerned about youth access to marijuana and cannabis.”

Many of his comments seemed to reflect findings from the most recent Monitoring the Future study. So far, the 2017 edition is still the most current.

And in some ways, Gottlieb seemed to accurately represent some of the study’s findings. In particular, he is correct that there has been a slight uptick in the number of teens consuming marijuana.

Specifically, there was a 1.3 percent increase in the number of teens who reported consuming weed in the year

Read more from our friends at High Times