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US state policy may affect cannabis use, suggests new study released Wednesday by Columbia University. It found that liberal states had higher pot utilization rates than conservative states, but that conservative states had higher rates of harmful and addictive use. These differences can be observed between certain age groups, whether or not a state has legalized the use of the pot.
Currently, the medical use of cannabis is permitted in 33 states, while 10 states, including Michigan and Vermont in 2018, have legalized it for recreational purposes. Much research has been conducted to determine whether this growing legalization of cannabis use has affected its popularity. Most of these studies have shown that marijuana laws for medical purposes make them more prevalent among young adults, but not among children and adolescents (data is less certain of the effects of cannabis laws). for recreational purposes on teenage rates).
According to lead author Morgan Philbins, a social scientist and behavioral scientist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, state laws about pots are not the only thing that can shape our attitudes and behaviors. with respect to drugs.
"[T]These state-specific cannabis laws exist in a broader political context and this relationship has not yet been explored (for example, a law on cannabis for medical purposes in Hawaii exists in a very different context from that of Arizona, for example), "she told Gizmodo by e-mail." Other work (on LGBT rights and immigration, for example) showed that the political climate as a whole could have an impact on health outcomes and we wanted to know if it was the same for cannabis use. "
Philbins and his team turned to the state data of the rank index of political liberalism, a scale developed by political scientist Virginia Gray. This scale ranks a state's political tendencies according to their policies on topics such as gun control, the right to abortion, welfare and workers' rights. Two versions of the index were published, in 2005 and 2011, with states such as New York, New Jersey and California topping the liberal ranks, and states like North Dakota, Alabama and Mississippi ranked as the most conservative. These data were then cross-checked with data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, which tracks self-reported drug use by different age groups.
Overall, adults over the age of 26 reported using cannabis in the last year or more, while those aged 18 to 25 used the most, according to the study. And the people of the Conservative states have consistently reported using cannabis less than those living in liberal states, a gap that has widened over time. For example, between 2005 and 2011, the percentage of reported use of the pan among 18-25 year olds increased from 33% to 37% in the most liberal states, while it increased by only 25% at 26% in the most conservative. States.
Some of these people have used cannabis so often that they were at the height of the cannabis use disorder (CUD). However, while the percentage of cannabis-related disorders decreased in both liberal and conservative states, overall it remained higher in the red states. For example, between 2005 and 2011, the percentage of CUD among cannabis users aged 18 to 25 increased from 22% to 18%, but also from 20% to 17% in the same age group in the United States. liberals, depending on the group. at the inquiry. The same pattern could be observed in all other age groups.
In both cases, the difference in cannabis and CUD use between liberal and conservative states could still be observed even after national marijuana laws were considered for medical purposes, although it is only young people under 26 years old. This suggests that other important aspects of public health policies affect our cannabis habits.
But Philbins says there is a major warning to their findings, published Wednesday in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Due to the type of data used, the study does not directly show that living in a liberal state leads to increased cannabis use or less disorderly consumption (or conversely, to living in a conservative state).
"This shows that policies that are not directly designed to target a specific outcome, in this case cannabis use, still have an impact," she said. "This can happen because the general climate of policies has an impact on the health of individuals by changing the context in which other policies work, or perhaps by making other behaviors healthier – the default behaviors . "
The team's results could therefore suggest that the healthier the average resident is, the less likely he or she is to suffer from CUD. State laws governing the use of other available drugs, such as alcohol or tobacco, may also affect the likelihood of cannabis use. At the very least, the study suggests that even if a state experiences an increase in cannabis use, it does not necessarily mean that more residents will develop a harmful addiction – and that there are policies that can prevent this.
"These different political contexts can contribute to the state-specific differences that need to be taken into account when adopting cannabis policies in the United States (for example, things like stigma, the availability of services, etc.). , access to care and knowledge and attitudes specific to cannabis), "said Philbins. . "The same is true for the legalization of cannabis: policies legalizing cannabis may have different impacts on cannabis use depending on the state in which it was adopted, and it is important for policy makers to know and discuss these factors when they plan to legalize. "
This study is the first to examine the link between state policy and cannabis use, said the authors. Future research will need to determine what specific policies might affect cannabis use, and whether these differences between liberal and conservative states can be observed over a longer period and more recently, after 2011, and between different demographic groups.
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