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Abstract
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The problem, condition, or issue
Cannabis is one of the most commonly used psychoactive substances globally, with an estimated 3.9% of the world's population aged 15-64 reporting past-year use (United Nations, 2020). Many world regions report higher annual prevalence rates (e.g., North America, 14.6%; Australasia, 10.6%; Western; and Central Europe, 7.8%), with certain countries in these regions documenting significant increases in cannabis use over the last decade (United Nations, 2020). Cannabis dependence accounts for a small fraction (5.5%) of the overall global burden of disease attributable to alcohol and drugs, but this burden commonly surpasses that of amphetamines in world regions with high rates of cannabis use (Degenhardt et al., 2013).
Against this backdrop, many countries and US states have liberalized their cannabis laws over the past 25 years (Decorte et al., 2020). Between 1996 and year-end 2019, 33 US states plus the District of Columbia enacted medical marijuana laws granting authorized patients legal access to cannabis.1 Moreover, since 2012, 11 states and the District of Columbia passed recreational marijuana laws legalizing adult use, including retail sales in nine states. These developments have led to a patchwork of state laws regulating access to cannabis through a variety of supply mechanisms, with state legislatures and citizen initiatives continuing to spur both new laws and amendments to existing laws (Chapman et al., 2016; Hoffmann & Weber, 2010; Klitzner et al., 2017; Williams et al., 2016). Indeed, voters in five US states will consider recreational or medical cannabis initiatives during the 2020 election. Dozens of other countries have also expanded legal access to cannabis under a variety of regulatory models, including decriminalization of home cultivation and the establishment of "cannabis social clubs" (Belackova et al., 2020; Decorte et al., 2017, 2020; Fischer et al., 2015; Rehm et al., 2019). Perhaps most notably, Uruguay became the first country to legalize recreational cannabis in 2013 (Queirolo, 2020), followed by Canada in 2018 (Fischer et al., 2020).
The empirical literature examining the effects of cannabis laws and policies is interdisciplinary and diverse. New research appears almost weekly, with studies examining a wide range of health, safety, and socioeconomic outcomes. Health outcomes measure physical and mental well-being or disease including cardiovascular disease (Abouk & Adams, 2018), opioid overdose (Chan et al., 2020), and suicide (Anderson et al., 2014; Chan et al., 2020). Safety outcomes measure security or risk of harm including crime (Morris et al., 2014), impaired driving (Sevigny, 2018), and vehicular accidents (Salomonsen-Sautel et al., 2014). Socioeconomic outcomes capture social and economic metrics including property values (Burkhardt & Flyr, 2019), labor supply (Nicholas & Maclean, 2019), and educational attainment (Plunk et al., 2016). To date, no concerted efforts have fully scoped this varied and growing literature. Consequently, stakeholders have an incomplete understanding of the effects of cannabis liberalization laws. This EGM aims to fill this gap by collecting and summarizing the available evidence for decision-makers and identifying opportunities for future knowledge generation.
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Language: en |