Editor’s note: Fact Checker is an analysis of statements made by candidates.
CLAIM: In his bid for lieutenant governor, Republican Randy Brock has cited alarming statistics on marijuana legalization in Colorado, including that youth use and emergency room visits have skyrocketed.
FACTS: Colorado legalized marijuana on Jan. 1, 2014, and the state began collecting data on pot use and impacts on health care.
Health and policy experts say the data is still too new, and therefore is somewhat unreliable.
Many organizations exploit the data for a political agenda, and Brock has cited data from these groups.
Brock has claimed that, in Colorado, emergency room visits related to marijuana have increased 49 percent since legalization and that youth marijuana use has jumped 20 percent.
These statistics appear to come from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a government-backed anti-drug unit whose motives have been questioned.
Brock’s youth pot consumption claim is entirely false.
The Colorado Health Department has found that the youth marijuana rate has not increased in any substantial way since legalization.
“Colorado is not seeing a substantial increase in teen use,” said Barbara Cimaglio, Vermont’s deputy health commissioner. “And in Vermont, while we have a higher than average use of marijuana, we do see that over time our high school use is decreasing.”
Brock’s claim on increased ER visits rings more true, as Colorado has seen a sharp spike in hospital visits in which marijuana was a factor, according to a report from the Colorado Department of Public Safety.
But while Brock claimed a 49 percent jump, hospital visits actually increased by 29 percent and the numbers remains relatively small — just 956 out of every 100,000 visits. (In the years before legalization, it was 739 per every 100,000.)
And while the increase is significant, the report noted that the spike may have to do more with the fact that patients no longer see a stigma and are more willing to disclose cannabis use in hospitals.
“Consequently, it is too early to draw any conclusions about the potential effects of marijuana legalization or commercialization on public safety, public health, or youth outcomes, and this may always be difficult due to the lack of historical data,” the report reads.
The entire 2016 Colorado report on legalization is available here.
David Zuckerman, Brock’s opponent, has also cited legalization statistics that don’t show the whole picture.
The pony-tailed Progressive has pointed to a 2014 study from Johns Hopkins University showing that 13 states with lax marijuana laws have seen “25 percent fewer people die from opioid overdoses annually.”
Cimaglio said that the precipitous drop in opioid use in these states — including Vermont — was most likely a result of increased treatment and awareness programs countrywide, not marijuana legalization.
“For Vermont, in addition to medical marijuana legalization we have also greatly increased access to treatment,” Cimaglio said, adding that “correlation does not mean causation.”
Cimaglio cautioned against any claim that opioid use could be greatly curbed through legalization of cannabis, and she pointed to other adverse health impacts of increased marijuana use in the state, including on teen brain development.
SCORE: Both Zuckerman and Brock cherry-picked Colorado statistics that fit their arguments.
Cimaglio said that data will be more reliable in a year or two, and she pointed to her department’s recently released health impact assessment as a good primer on how marijuana legalization may affect Vermont’s overall public health.
Cimaglio said the biggest lesson she has learned from Colorado is the importance of implementing drug education and prevention programs before legalization, a move Colorado did not make. She said this would be key in continuing to push Vermont’s youth rates down.
“I would not say that I see a public health crisis in states like Colorado,” Cimaglio said. “I would say there are areas of concern and some areas where there has been a positive change.”
