Legalising cannabis in the US has seen fatal road crashes increase by up to 22 per cent in those states, a study reveals. The team from the University of Illinois Chicago looked at seven states that had recreational cannabis dispensaries and found that four of them had seen huge increases in road deaths.
And on average fatal crashes had gone up by ten per cent. Researchers used death certificate data to compare mortality rates in states that legalised recreational cannabis dispensaries with states that only provided access to medical cannabis.
They collected data from death certificates from 2009-2019 on deaths in three areas that have previously been linked to cannabis use but are still poorly understood: motor vehicle accidents, suicide and opioid overdose. The states involved were Alaska, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
