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Effect of Cannabis Legalization on US Autism Incidence and Medium Term Projections

Albert Stuart Reece, Gary Kenneth Hulse

Objective: In that cannabis use has been linked with the development of autism spectrum disorder like conditions in gestationally exposed children, we set out to explore the extent to which rising cannabis use might contribute to the rising autism epidemic.
Methods: Datasets from US Department of Education Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), National Survey of Drug Use and Health, and CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network were investigated. Data on legal status was derived from SAMHSA.
Results: IDEA had N=1,023 and ADDM N=87. Modelling of IDEA consistently showed that models quadratic-intime out-performed linear-only models (ANOVA p<2.0x10-16). In both datasets liberalization of cannabis legislation was associated with increased ASD (p<10-9 and p<0.05 respectively). Slopes of: ASD vs. time, Cannabis vs. time and ASD vs. cannabis curves were shown to be related on graphical analysis by geofacet plots and tanglegrams (entanglement=0.3326). CDC’s ADDM network quoted US autism incidence 168/10,000 in 2014. IDEA projections indicated rates 108.57, 131.67 and 166.49 in cannabis-illegal, -medical and -decriminalized states rising
exponentially to 282.37, 396.91 and 455.54 by 2030.
Conclusion: ASD is the commonest form of cannabis-associated clinical teratology. Using two independent datasets and two categorization methods we confirmed that  medical, decriminalized and legal cannabis regimes are associated with higher rates of ASD than illegal ones. Findings are consistent with molecular, cellular and epigenetic
mechanisms. Formerly quadratic regression curves become exponential when projected forwards to 2030; predict a lower quantum than the 2014 ADDM CDC figure; and indicate a 60% excess of cases in legal states by 2030.