Does Marijuana Legalization Cause Pedestrian Fatalities?

A recentreport from the Governors Highway Safety Alliance suggests that the legalization of recreational marijuana in many U.S. states has been associated with increases in pedestrian traffic fatalities. To substantiate this claim, the report cites that:“[t]he seven states (Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Washington) and DC that legalized recreational use of marijuana between 2012 and 2016 reported a collective 16.4 percent increase in pedestrian fatalities for the first six months of 2017 versus the first six months of 20 16, whereas all other states reported a collective 5.8 percent decrease in pedestrian fatalities.” This statistic, however, does not indicate the impact of legalization on pedestrian fatalities because many states did not legalize between the time periods cited.   An appropriate analysis should examine what happens, state-by-state, at the time of each state’s own legalization.The graphs below depict pedestrian fatalities for states that legalized recreations marijuana between 2012 and 2016. The red lines represents the year in which the state legalized.   The graphs suggest no relation between legalization and pedestrian deaths.For the states that did legalize in 2016 (Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada), the provisional January-June 2017 used in the GHSA report are the only data available for comparison. Yet, between January-June 2016 and January-June 2017, these three states saw an average decrease in pedestrian fatalities o...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs