By Oli Herrera

CANNABIS STUDY

New study finds no association with legalized cannabis and traffic injuries

Nov 12, 2021 | 5:10 PM

PRINCE GEORGE—It’s been more than three years since Canada legalized recreational marijuana.

Along with it, only a handful of countries and some U.S. states allow recreational use. However, prior to the country going green, a big concern was the affect it would have on drivers—especially younger ones.

But a new study has found that immediately following the legalization of cannabis, there has not been an increase in traffic-related injuries due to impaired driving.

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“What we found that immediately after cannabis legalization, there was no change in these patterns and so that went contrary to my expectations which I thought those patterns would go up.” said Dr. Russ Callaghan, Lead Researcher.

The study was in collaboration with UNBC, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, University of Victoria, and Dalhousie University.

The study gathered data from hospitals in Alberta and Ontario. Both provinces record 100% of its emergency room admissions in a public database. The study used more than 250,000 reports of traffic-related injuries from adult drivers and youth drivers from 2015 to 2019.

In Alberta, youth drivers are classified as 14-17 years old. In Ontario, youth drivers are 16-18 years old.

Of the 52,752 reported injuries (adult drivers) in Alberta, results shows that there was only an increase of 9.17 visits.

Of the 186,921 reported injuries (adult drivers) in Ontario, there was only an increase of 28.93 visits.

“Really what I wanted to do was assess some of the major indicators that could contribute to this parliamentary review and also help the public understand what the consequences of this legislation might be.” said Callaghan.

Callaghan says this is just one of many studies that are needed to truly understand the impact of legalized cannabis.

“It doesn’t mean that the legalization didn’t have an impact on traffic. There are a range of traffic harms, you can have traffic-related mortalities and you could have collisions and so on.” said Callaghan.

The doctor says that strict federal impaired-driving laws such as Bill C-46 may have played a role for the lack of correlation.

Fatal accidents is the next area that Callaghan plans to examine.