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A new study on marijuana legalization in Colorado answers the question: Has legal pot made other drug problems worse? - The Colorado Sun
Jan 31, 2023 1 min, 0 secs
“At least from the psychological point of view,” said Stephanie Zellers, one of the researchers, “we really didn’t find that the policies (on cannabis legalization) have a lot of negative influence, which I think is important.”

The survey information, then, creates an ideal scenario for study: It is thorough, it has built-in controls for variables like educational background or socioeconomic status, and it also accounts better than most for genetic differences.

To answer that question, the team came up with 23 measures of what they call “psychological dysfunction.” This includes things like substance-use disorders but also financial woes, mental health distress, community disengagement and relationship issues.

To Zellers and other researchers, the study provides valuable information for the ongoing debate over whether cannabis legalization is a good idea.

Zellers said she and her colleagues are hoping to publish another study based on their data — but this one will be less concerned about the impacts of marijuana legalization as a policy.

Instead, it will try to look at how much cannabis people have used over their lifetimes and then score that against the same measures of psychological dysfunction “to see if, not the policy, but the actual substance itself has an effect,” Zellers said.

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