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On January 1, 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to sell legal recreational marijuana for adult use. As a result, Colorado has had to carefully examine potential population health and safety impacts as well as the role of public health in response to legalization. We have discussed an emerging public health framework for legalized recreational marijuana. We have outlined this framework according to the core public health functions of assessment, policy development, and assurance. In addition, we have discussed challenges to implementing this framework that other states considering legalization may face.

This study examines the extent to which knowledge of recreational marijuana laws, health effects, and perceptions of risk for marijuana use differ between Spanish- and English-speaking Latino survey respondents from a registry of Colorado adults. Spanish-speaking Latino respondents (n = 47) had less accurate knowledge of laws permitting use of marijuana than English-speaking Latino respondents (n = 154), while reporting greater agreement with negative health effects and higher perception of risk associated with marijuana use. The results suggest that efforts to communicate health and informational messaging to the public about legalized marijuana should consider linguistic variations when tailoring campaigns for Latino audiences.

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