Richardson Lilliard E, Mallinson Daniel J, Altaf Shazib, Neeley Grant
School of Public Policy, Penn State, 509 Welch Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
School of Public Affairs, Penn State Harrisburg, 777 W. Harrisburg Pike, Middletown, PA, 17057, USA.
Sci Data. 2025 Jun 10;12(1):971. doi: 10.1038/s41597-025-05284-2.
Cannabis policies across the U.S. states vary considerably, and we categorize state data into three policy bundles: pharmaceutical, permissive, and fiscal. Each of the bundles is comprised of twelve constituent policies that reflect the dimensions of state cannabis policy. Factor analysis confirmed the three policy dimensions, and the bundles for each state in each year were transformed to range from 0 to 100. This results in two datasets - one with the original 36 dichotomous policy indicators and one with the three policy bundles for each state from 1994 to 2023. The bundles provide researchers with data to understand the effects of cannabis legalization on myriad policy outcomes (e.g., public health or crime). The bundles capture significant variation in policy design cross-sectionally between the states and within the states over time. This provides an advancement over studies that treat legalization as a dichotomy, thus ignoring variation in policy design that is inherently related to impacts of interest, such as health, crime, and social outcomes.
美国各州的大麻政策差异很大，我们将州数据分为三类政策组合：制药类、宽松类和财政类。每个组合由十二项构成政策组成，这些政策反映了州大麻政策的各个方面。因子分析证实了这三个政策维度，并且每年每个州的政策组合都被转换为0到100的范围。这产生了两个数据集——一个包含原始的36个二分法政策指标，另一个包含1994年至2023年每个州的三个政策组合。这些政策组合为研究人员提供数据，以了解大麻合法化对众多政策结果（如公共卫生或犯罪）的影响。这些政策组合在各州之间以及各州内部随时间的推移，捕捉到了政策设计方面的显著差异。这比那些将合法化视为二分法的研究有了进步，从而忽略了与健康、犯罪和社会结果等相关影响内在相关的政策设计差异。
