Marijuana use is clearly increasing at a rapid rate in the United States, but the trend is not the result of the growing number of state laws that allow the legal use of recreational or medical marijuana.
That’s the conclusive result of an investigative study that was put in the journal Addiction that was published online this week.
“Medical and recreational marijuana policies did not have any significant association with increased marijuana use,” the study found. “Marijuana policy liberalization over the past 20 years has certainly been associated with increased marijuana use; however, policy changes appear to have occurred in response to changing attitudes within states and to have effects on attitudes and behaviors more generally in the U.S.”
Researchers at the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group analyzed data from the periodic National Alcohol Surveys and stacked its results on marijuana use against changes in state laws.
Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C. have comprehensive legal medical cannabis programs, and eight states and D.C. have legalized marijuana for adults over 21 years of age.
They found that instead of being caused by policy changes, the rise in cannabis use was “primarily explained by period effects,” meaning societal factors that affect populations across age and generational groups. The authors identify a decreasing disapproval of marijuana use as one such factor potentially at play.
However, they are very confident that the rise in marijuana use was not caused by changes to cannabis laws.
“The steep rise in marijuana use in the United States since 2005 occurred across the population and is attributable to general period effects not specifically linked to the liberalization of marijuana policies in some states,” the paper’s abstract says.
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