Recreational marijuana legalisation may boost traffic deaths. Here’s how

Laws legalising leisure marijuana could result in extra site visitors deaths, two new research counsel, though questions stay about how they may affect driving habits. Previous analysis has had blended outcomes and the brand new research, revealed Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, can’t show that the site visitors dying will increase they discovered had been attributable to marijuana use. One research discovered an extra 75 site visitors deaths per yr after retail gross sales started in Colorado in January 2014, in contrast with states with out comparable legal guidelines. But it discovered no comparable change in Washington state. The different research checked out these states plus two others that enable leisure pot gross sales, Oregon and Alaska. If each state legalised leisure marijuana gross sales, an additional 6,800 folks would die annually in site visitors accidents, the researchers calculated. They discovered a rise of two deaths per billion miles travelled in contrast with 20 states with out these legal guidelines. That change was barely greater than within the different research.

Both concerned a number of years of site visitors dying knowledge from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration earlier than and a minimum of two years after retail gross sales of leisure pot started within the states examined. Those gross sales dates ranged from 2014 to 2016.

The research lack data on whether or not motorists had been stoned after they crashed. Marijuana can stay in tissues for a number of days so even when toxicology checks detected it after a deadly crash, that wouldn’t show the motive force was impaired, mentioned co-author Magdalena Cerda, a New York University researcher.

It’s attainable that leisure pot legal guidelines may have an effect on drivers’ use of different medication, together with alcohol, she famous.

“That’s an open question we need to answer in further research,” Cerda mentioned.

A journal editorial mentioned extra rigorous analysis is required together with research on how typically motorists use medication.

“Clearly, introducing new legal intoxicants has the potential to … lead to deaths due to impaired driving,” the editorial mentioned.

Recreational marijuana is authorized in 11 states.

Variations in gross sales taxes, buy limits and different facets of marijuana legal guidelines in every state may play a job in any impression on site visitors deaths. Also, when the two-state research was completed, pot shops had been extra densely positioned in Colorado than in Washington, which may have made the drug extra available, the authors mentioned.

The four-state research, led by Dr. Russell Kamer of New York Medical College, accounted for jobless charges, most pace legal guidelines and seat-belt legal guidelines. But the authors mentioned different elements they didn’t take into account may have influenced site visitors deaths.

(This story has been revealed from a wire company feed with out modifications to the textual content. Only the headline has been modified.)

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