Happy 4/20 to the millions of people celebrating across the country, including many more the reason staff As someone who never had an interest in pot, saving up for a summer in college, or drugs in general, I’ve always found the day a bit odd. But as I’ve gotten older (and more libertarian), I’ve come to appreciate it as a celebration of individual freedom.
I’m not the only one to change my mind. In 2025, 64 percent of Americans think marijuana should be legal for both medical and recreational use (up from 31 percent in 2000). According to in Gallup. Meanwhile, 40 states The medical use of cannabis, etc. has been given legal recognition 24 which also allows for recreational use. Late last year, President Donald Trump ordered the reclassification of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, placing it in the same category as prescription drugs such as “Tylenol with ketamine, anabolic steroids, and codeine.” explains the reasonJacob Sullum.
Prohibitionists warned that legalization would have dire consequences. Here are some of their predictions that are yet to be fulfilled.
Led by the 2012 vote on Amendment 64, which made Colorado the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, Douglas County Sheriff David Weaver warned Voters must anticipate “more harmful consequences” should the measure pass, including “more crime.”
According to a Policy brief According to the Reason Foundation (which publishes this journal), “the literature covering the relationship between marijuana use and violence appears to be largely inconclusive.” While research “generally suggests that marijuana use is associated with increases in violent behavior,” the authors write, correlation is not causation, and many studies suggest otherwise.
After recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon, homicide rates in those states remained well below the national average (although they rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, mirroring national trends). From 1999 to 2022, the authors of the CAUSE Foundation report found, “both recreational and medical marijuana legalization” were “associated with decreases in homicide rates.” A 2013 Report Even from the RAND Center for Drug Policy Research “contemporary, little support for a causal relationship [marijuana] use and either violent or property crime.”
Prohibitionists, however, stand by their predictions. In March, Ohio House Speaker Matt Hoffman (R-Lima) defended proposed limits on THC content in the state. saying Legalization in Ohio has “made more marijuana available to the community,” leading to “more crime.”
Sheriff Weaver also warned that legalization would result in “more kids using marijuana.” That fear was also aroused.
In 2022, Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, noted That “in the United States, the legalization of marijuana by some states is not associated with an increase in marijuana use among adolescents.” Nationwide, reports of drug use among teenagers have been declining for several years. In 2024, the National Institutes of Health found that “substance use among teenagers remained stable at low levels for the fourth year in a row.” Volkow called these results “unprecedented” and urged the scientific community to continue researching “factors that contribute to reduced risk of substance use.”
One reason can Legalization is. Pulling together the results of government surveys, there is the Marijuana Policy Project found Last-month pot use by adolescents has decreased in most states where recreational use is legal. For example, in Michigan, 17 percent of high school students reported past-month marijuana use in 2023, down from 24 percent in 2017. In Virginia, the rate drops from 17 percent in 2019 to 9.5 percent in 2023.
While there may be many reasons why teens are smoking less pot — including: Increasing use As for other drugs—one thing seems certain: The legalization of weed did not produce a stoner generation.
There were also widespread predictions that legalization would increase traffic accidents. The statistics are decidedly mixed and ambiguous on this.
In 2021, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) released Study After legalization, traffic accidents have been found to increase by 7 percent in legalized states. The same study concluded that traffic fatality rates did not increase by a statistically significant amount and that “state-licensed recreational sales had no apparent effect on injury rates.” the reasonJacob Sullum Reported in time. In the same year, I.I.H.S found Drivers who only used cannabis were no more likely to be involved in car accidents than drivers who did not use cannabis.
Such mixed results are not uncommon. As researchers at the Reason Foundation have concluded white paper: “Few firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the risk of traffic accident deaths from marijuana legalization … Overall, no conclusive or definitive patterns related to cannabis legalization have emerged in the data or research to this point.”
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