Study: cannabis legalization has not increased the number of road accidents in the USA

According to a new study published this month, the cannabis legalization is not associated with an increase in the number of road accident victims.

Andrew Young, graduate student at Kansas State University, examined data on the average number of road accident victims over 23 years and used two models to assess the impact of cannabis reform on road safety.

«Cannabis legalization is not found to be a statistically significant predictor of mortality rates,» he concluded. «This finding means that the legalization of medical or adult-use cannabis is neither associated with a reduction nor an increase in the number of deaths per 100,000 kilometers traveled.»

After conducting a regression analysis revealing no evidence that cannabis legalization led to an increase or decrease in deaths, Andrew Young used the double-difference method to compare mortality rates in the American states where cannabis is legal and control states. The analysis covered eight years of data, starting five years before cannabis was legalized in each state where it was legalized.

«The results of the analysis suggest that there is no statistically significant relationship between cannabis legalization and fatal crashes,» Young wrote. «These results suggest that the concerns of policymakers and the public that cannabis legalization would worsen road safety are not entirely well-founded.»

«According to the differences-in-differences model, the recent upward trend in national traffic fatality rates is not the result of the legalization of cannabis for medical purposes. In fact, cannabis legalization does not predict traffic accidents,» he wrote.

The main limitation of the study, which was not published in a peer-reviewed journal, concerns states where cannabis has been legalized for adult use. The small sample size, at least compared to that of the medical cannabis, As a result, he may not have been able to «fully assess the impact of recreational cannabis on road safety».

Other studies have also failed to identify a statistically significant relationship. between cannabis legalization and road safety.