Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.
Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
J Stud Alcohol Drugs. 2022 Nov;83(6):829-838. doi: 10.15288/jsad.21-00462.
Rapid shifts toward cannabis liberalization in the United States have created immense policy variability that is challenging to measure. We developed composite measures to characterize the restrictiveness of U.S. state cannabis policy environments.
Nine panelists, consisting of four research team members and five expert policy consultants, nominated distinct cannabis policies pertaining to cannabis prohibition, medicalization, and legalization for recreational use. For each of the 17 nominated policies, panelists developed implementation ratings and rated each policy's relative efficacy for reducing excessive cannabis use by adults, youth use, and impaired driving. Cannabis Policy Scale scores were then calculated for each state-year for all 50 states from 1999 to 2019 by weighting policies by their efficacy and implementation ratings, and then summing over policies.
Median Cannabis Policy Scale scores remained stable until 2008, when they started declining (representing policy liberalization), with steeper declines after 2012. In 2019, state Cannabis Policy Scale scores targeting excessive use among the general population ranged from 29.6 to 66.7 for recreational cannabis legalization states, and from 72.4 to 93.4 for medical cannabis legalization states. Cannabis Policy Scale scores using youth-specific and driving-specific efficacy ratings showed similar trends.
The Cannabis Policy Scale reflects trends toward liberalization of cannabis policy in many U.S. states. Even within crude policy phenotypes (e.g., medical cannabis programs), Cannabis Policy Scale scores varied considerably between states and over time. The Cannabis Policy Scale is a new measure that can add nuance to cannabis policy research and help assess cannabis policy-outcome relationships.
美国对大麻合法化的快速转变带来了巨大的政策变化，难以衡量。我们开发了综合指标来描述美国各州大麻政策环境的限制程度。
由四名研究小组成员和五名专家政策顾问组成的九名小组成员提名了与大麻禁止、医疗和娱乐合法化相关的不同大麻政策。对于提名的 17 项政策中的每一项，小组成员都制定了实施评级，并对每项政策减少成年人过度使用大麻、青少年使用和驾驶障碍的相对效果进行了评级。然后，通过对政策的有效性和实施评级进行加权，并对政策进行求和，计算出 1999 年至 2019 年 50 个州每年的大麻政策量表得分。
大麻政策量表的中位数得分在 2008 年之前保持稳定，之后开始下降（表示政策放宽），2012 年之后下降幅度更大。2019 年，针对普通人群过度使用大麻的州大麻政策量表得分，娱乐用大麻合法化的州从 29.6 到 66.7，医疗用大麻合法化的州从 72.4 到 93.4。使用针对青少年和驾驶特定效果的大麻政策量表评分显示出类似的趋势。
大麻政策量表反映了美国许多州大麻政策自由化的趋势。即使在粗略的政策表型（例如，医疗大麻计划）中，大麻政策量表评分在各州之间和随时间变化也有很大差异。大麻政策量表是一种新的度量标准，可以为大麻政策研究增添细微差别，并有助于评估大麻政策结果关系。
