Today, a new Colorado report compiled by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area finds marijuana-positive traffic fatalities, hospitalizations, marijuana use, and illegal market activity have increased since marijuana legalization.
“We should pump the brakes on marijuana legalization, slow down, and consider these implications before opening the door for the next Big Tobacco,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “It is time to put public health over private profit.”
The report finds that since marijuana legalization:
- Drugged driving went from killing roughly one person every 6.5 days to now killing someone every 2.5 days
- Marijuana positive deaths have doubled
- Regular marijuana use among the general population increased 45 percent
- Marijuana use in Colorado is 85 percent higher than the nation
- The report also found that youth marijuana use increased 5 percent and is 54 percent higher than the national average, ranked 7th in the nation
- The number of highway seizures of Colorado marijuana increased 39 percent
- A total of 7.3 tons of illicit, Colorado-grown marijuana has been seized by law enforcement as it was en route to 24 different states
- Seizures of Colorado marijuana in the U.S. mail system has increased 1,042 percent from an average of 52 parcels (2009-2012) to an average of 594 parcels (2013-2017)