Far fewer teenagers are using cannabis in Colorado since the state’s tightly regulated legal market for recreational pot got off the ground at the start of 2014, new data shows.

Somebody should tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions. While the ardent drug warrior has thus far surprised critics and disappointed fans by failing to launch the kind of broad crackdown on legalized cannabis that most observers anticipated he would pursue, he has continued to hint that winter is coming for the pot industry. The question of youth pot consumption is almost always on his lips when he discusses the drug.

Supporters of legalization have always argued that taxed, regulated, and legally traded cannabis is much easier to keep away from kids. A black market product fosters abuse and makes little meaningful delineation between young buyers and adult ones. While legalization skeptics understandably fret about child safety when the subject is debated, the data from Colorado bears out the long-theoretical logic that says kids will have a much harder time getting weed if it is treated like beer, cigarettes, and other legal intoxicants.

The latest edition of the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health supports the legalizer’s forecast. About 9 percent of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 in Colorado reported using marijuana in the last month, down from about 11 percent in the previous year’s survey and from about 12.5 percent the year before that.

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Source: Sorry Sessions, teen pot use actually dropped after Colorado legalization – ThinkProgress