In a superficially ironic twist of events, it would appear as though legalizing marijuana, rather than causing the youth to run out, murder toddlers, and fornicate with one another in the name of Satan, actually leads to a more peaceful, less catastrophic society. At least, that's what one study conducted by professors in Montana and Colorado now claims. It looks as though states who have given the go-ahead to medical marijuana use have also seen a welcome decrease in traffic deaths. More pot equals fewer car crashes, say the numbers.

 

D. Mark Anderson and Daniel Rees crunched some numbers and discovered that states who had legalized medical marijuana saw a 9 percent decrease in car-related deaths from the time of legalization. Even the researchers were surprised by their own findings. Rees has conjectured that greater accessibility of marijuana could result in more teens smoking up rather than drinking heavily. While it's not necessarily the best idea to get behind the wheel of a car with a head full of smoke, it probably is at least less dangerous than speeding while hammered on booze. Marijuana doesn't lead you to the same kind of overconfidence that alcohol does, nor does it impair your motor skills quite so severely. So it's possible that stoned drivers are killing fewer people than drunk drivers.

 

Now, anyone who's taken Statistics 101 knows that there's a big difference between correlation and causation. Just because driving deaths are decreasing doesn't mean it's because of marijuana's legal status. It could be a nice coincidence--or it could be that traffic accidents are decreasing in frequency all across the map. The study failed to look at the rate of traffic deaths in recent years in states where marijuana remains illegal in all its forms. So there was no control group to demonstrate even a casual relationship between the two factors.

 

It makes for a nice headline--that smokers kill fewer people than drinkers--but ultimately this seems like kind of sloppy science. If nothing else, at least it's optimistic. After all, if traffic deaths are happening less often in all states, that's something to be happy about on its own. And if marijuana access actually does lead to fewer and fewer fender benders? Well, that's a big plus one for partakers. The research could act as a template for a more in-depth study, one that looks at accident rates across the board and also takes into account how much medical marijuana increases overall recreational use. Maybe we'll see some more thorough investigation in the future.