Here is adobe's outlook on flash player. Doesn't seem to be any mention of killing as2 support.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashpla...s/roadmap.html

As far as time wasted on learning AS3, impossible. You have to remember that as1 and as2 were custom scripting languages designed to operate on the flash player but followed no actual programming language standards although some features resembled them. AS3 was a complete re-design to be ECMA compliant. This means it follows guidelines used in many other languages so by learning as3, you're only making it easier to work in similar systems.