Concerns about road safety are often cited as an argument against cannabis legalization. Now that seven years have passed since the historic votes by Colorado and Washington state to legalize, there is enough data for a statistical analysis of whether these fears are warranted \u2014 and one scholar has risen to the occasion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A new study from Kansas State University crunches the data multiple ways.\u00a0Marijuana Moment<\/a>, which first reported on the study last week, prominently quotes the most salient line from its conclusions: \u201c[L]egalizing marijuana is not found to be a statistically significant predictor of fatality rates. This finding means that the legalization of marijuana for both medical and recreational purposes is not associated with either a reduction or increase in fatalities per 100,000 vehicle miles traveled.\u201d<\/p>\n Entitled \u201cMarijuana Legalization and Road Safety: A Panel Study of US States,<\/a>\u201d the survey was written by Andrew R. Young, a graduate student in regional and community planning. It examines statistics from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS<\/a>) maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA<\/a>) for the 23 years from 1994 through 2016.\u00a0<\/p>\n Young first\u00a0conducted a \u201cregression analysis<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a statistical method that examines the relationship between two variables. This revealed no correlation between state legalization policies \u2014 whether of medical or \u201crecreational\u201d cannabis \u2014 and either an increase or decrease in traffic fatalities.<\/p>\n Young then a used a \u201cdifference-in-difference<\/a>\u201d model to compare traffic fatality rates in legal cannabis states and \u201ccontrol\u201d states. This is a method that compares data from \u201ctreatment\u201d and \u201ccontrol\u201d groups to estimate a causal effect. Again, no concrete trend emerged from the analysis. For instance, in Arizona, where medical marijuana has been legalized, average traffic fatalities mirrored those of Wyoming and South Dakota, where cannabis remained prohibited.\u00a0<\/p>\n Traffic fatalities dropped in Washington, D.C. following the City Council\u2019s 2010 approval of medical marijuana, and were lower than in Utah or Virginia, which prohibited all cannabis use. (Utah\u00a0approved a medical marijuana law<\/a>\u00a0last November, but that was after the period covered by the study. Virginia\u00a0became a \u201cCBD-only\u201d state<\/a>\u00a0in 2015.)<\/p>\n Young concluded: \u201cAccording to the models, the recent upward trend of traffic fatality rates nationwide is not a result of medical marijuana legalization. In fact, the legalization of marijuana is not found to be a predictor of traffic fatalities.\u201d<\/p>\n Addressing the prohibitionist exploitation of the issue, Young wrote: \u201cThese findings suggest that concerns of policy makers and the public that legalizing marijuana will worsen road safety are not entirely founded.\u201d<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve noted before<\/a>, the entire question of \u201cmarijuana-impaired driving\u201d tends to be misunderstood.\u00a0For example, it is true that Colorado has seen an increase in overall road fatalities since legalization in 2012, as well as an increase in cannabis-related driving offenses. But the increase in road fatalities is consistent with the trend across the U.S. \u2014 and is likely related to more motorists on the highways due to low oil prices. It was fortuitous for the prohibitionists that the world oil slump began in 2014 \u2014 just in time to provide negative spin for cannabis legalization.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2009, when the oil price spike set off by the Iraq War was at its peak, highway fatalities coast to coast dropped to 1960s levels, as the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0noted at the time.<\/p>\n All this goes to show once again that, as the old adage states,\u00a0correlation does not imply causation<\/a>. Young\u2019s study demonstrates that evidence of a causal link between cannabis legalization and traffic fatalities just isn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, what other myths about cannabis would you like to see studied?<\/p>\n The post Study: No Link Between Legal Weed & Traffic Deaths<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Concerns about road safety are often cited as an argument against cannabis legalization. Now that seven years have passed since the historic votes by Colorado and Washington state to legalize, there is enough data for a statistical analysis of whether these fears are warranted \u2014 and one scholar has risenContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,689,327,9876,90,9877,9878,369,3804],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34982"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34983,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34982\/revisions\/34983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}An Inconvenient Truth \u2014 For Prohibitionists<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Correlation Versus Causation<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Study: No Link Between Legal Weed & Traffic Deaths<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"