In this Oct. 2, 2012, photo, former Texas Rangers pitcher Mike Jeffcoat pitches a head of lettuce to illustrate good nutrition during a fitness event in Arlington, Texas. Texas Wesleyan University has fired its baseball coach after he told a high school player from Colorado that the team doesn't recruit from the state because players there fail drug tests. President Fred Slabach said Mike Jeffcoat was fired Thursday, March 1, 2018, both for his remark and amid an investigation into an NAIA violation regarding players' eligibility. (Joyce Marshall/Star-Telegram via AP)

Large majority of Colorado students aren’t using marijuana — no matter what a Texas baseball coach thinks

When a Texas college baseball coach told a prospective recruit that he’d blacklisted athletes from Colorado over concerns about marijuana use, it brought swift rebuke from across the country and a pink slip from the coach’s school.

But it also mangled a pretty basic fact about post-legalization Colorado: The kids aren’t all stoned.

There are two main surveys that measure marijuana use among Colorado youth — one run by the federal government and one run by the state — and on this topic they agree. A large majority of Colorado high school students are not using marijuana regularly or even infrequently. And a still-sizable majority say they have never used marijuana.

The most recent data from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which is run by the state, is from 2015 — so, one year after recreational marijuana sales began. (Survey data from 2017 should be available soon.)

In that survey, 62 percent of high school kids said they had never used marijuana, and 79 percent said they hadn’t used marijuana in the previous month.

Graphic provided by The Denver Post

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