Department of Public Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Connecticut, Farmington, Connecticut, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Am J Addict. 2022 Sep;31(5):423-432. doi: 10.1111/ajad.13286. Epub 2022 Apr 2.
A growing number of US states have legalized marijuana use in the past decade. We examined if marijuana legalization is associated with increased marijuana-related admissions to substance use treatment facilities between 2000 and 2017.
Data from the Treatment Episode Data Set-Admissions were used to examine the relationship between marijuana-related admissions among adults aged ≥18 by year and legalization status (i.e., fully legalized, medical use only [partially legalized], and illegal) (N = 35,457,854). Using interaction analyses, we further examined whether certain patient characteristics were associated with residence in states that legalized marijuana use as compared to those in which marijuana remained illegal.
Overall, the proportion of marijuana-related admissions in states with legalization decreased by 2.3% from 31.7% in 2000-2005 to 29.4% in 2012-2017 (odds ratio [OR], 0.90; 95% confidence intervals [CI], 0.89-0.90) with little difference from states where marijuana use remained illegal, in which marijuana use as any reason for admissions decreased by 0.3% from 39.8% in 2000-2005 to 39.5% in 2012-2017 (OR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-0.99). We did not find any striking patient characteristics (e.g., referral by the police) associated with admissions in states that legalized compared to those that had not.
While earlier studies suggested that marijuana legalization is associated with increased levels of use, emergency department visits, and traffic fatalities, our findings suggest that marijuana legalization did not increase marijuana-related treatment use in the United States.
This is the first study to examine the association of marijuana legalization with marijuana-related treatment use.
在过去的十年中，越来越多的美国州将大麻使用合法化。我们研究了大麻合法化是否与 2000 年至 2017 年期间大麻相关的药物滥用治疗机构入院人数增加有关。
使用治疗发作数据集中的入院数据，通过年和法律地位（即完全合法、仅医疗用途[部分合法]和非法）来检查成人中与大麻相关的入院人数之间的关系（N=35457854）。通过交互分析，我们进一步研究了与大麻使用仍然非法的州相比，某些患者特征是否与居住在大麻使用合法化的州有关。
总体而言，从 2000-2005 年的 31.7%下降到 2012-2017 年的 29.4%，大麻合法化州的大麻相关入院比例下降了 2.3%（比值比[OR]，0.90；95%置信区间[CI]，0.89-0.90），与大麻使用仍然非法的州没有太大区别，在这些州，大麻使用作为任何原因的入院人数从 2000-2005 年的 39.8%下降到 2012-2017 年的 39.5%（OR，0.99；95%CI，0.98-0.99）。我们没有发现任何明显的患者特征（例如，警方转介）与合法化州的入院有关。
虽然早期的研究表明大麻合法化与使用水平、急诊室就诊和交通死亡人数增加有关，但我们的研究结果表明，大麻合法化并没有增加美国的大麻相关治疗使用。
这是第一项研究大麻合法化与大麻相关治疗使用之间关联的研究。
