Cannabis use and driving under the influence: Behaviors and attitudes by state-level legal sale of recreational cannabis

Cannabis legalization and driving under the influence of cannabis in a national U.S. Sample

“…One difference between Fink et al’s study and ours is that, unlike Fink et al, we only examined differences by legalization at one time point. Similar to our findings, Lensch et al (2020) found that daily or almost daily users living in states with legal recreational sales were less likely to report DUIC compared to those living in states without legal recreational sales ( Lensch et al, 2020 ). Unlike our analysis, however, Benedetti et al ( Benedetti et al, 2021 ) found no significant difference in DUIC by legalization.…”

“…They found an increase in DUIC over time, with a larger increase occurring in states that enacted medical cannabis laws during this time period, compared to states that enacted these laws before or after the analytic time period. Lensch et al ( Lensch et al, 2020 ) found a higher prevalence of self-reported DUIC in states with legal recreational cannabis sales than states without them. The study also found an interaction between cannabis use and legalization, with frequent users living in recreational states being less likely to report DUIC compared to similar users living in non-recreational states.…”

“…This analysis used national survey data to examine differences in self-reported DUIC across three legal environments. This analysis contributes to the small body of literature on self-reported DUIC and builds upon the only other study examining self-reported DUIC and both medical and recreational legalization ( Benedetti et al, 2021 ) by accounting for cannabis use frequency, which has been established as an important determinant of this relationship ( Lensch et al, 2020 ). The findings of this analysis are important because they have the potential to inform both medical and recreational cannabis legalization and the content of these laws.…”

Demographic and policy-based differences in behaviors and attitudes towards driving after marijuana use: an analysis of the 2013–2017 Traffic Safety Culture Index

“…These findings are consistent with the policy-based difference in the present study; however we did not control for potential confounders or baseline differences in the outcome. Unlike Lensch et al we did not find that self-reported driving after marijuana use is more prevalent in states that legalized RM [13]. A possible explanation for this discrepancy is the difference in policy dates used in either study: Lensch et al used the date on which commercial sales of RM were legalized, whereas we used the effective dates of RM legalization.…”

“…An alternative approach to study relationships between marijuana policies and driving after marijuana use is to use surveys that collect information on selfreported behaviors and attitudes. However, relatively few studies have used self-reported data for this purpose [11][12][13]. Previous studies have explored differences in self-reported driving after marijuana use or driving under the influence of marijuana based on demographic factors and the presence of per-se marijuana laws, which equate impaired driving to a threshold of detectable THC in one's system [14,15], however they did not consider recreational or medical marijuana policies (RM and MM, respectively).…”