Marijuana Legalization and Intimate Partner Violence: Why the Evidence Remains Unsettled
Research on recreational marijuana legalization and intimate partner violence (IPV) has produced conflicting results. A Georgetown University master’s thesis found that states with legal recreational cannabis reported fewer IPV incidents, while a later peer-reviewed study reached the opposite conclusion. Together, the findings suggest that marijuana policy and domestic violence are connected in complex ways—and that legalization alone cannot be treated as either a proven risk or a public-health solution.
In Samantha Gene Baldwin’s thesis, the author analyzed FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System data from 2013 through 2019. The analysis covered 23 states and compared reported IPV incidents in states where recreational marijuana was available through retail stores with incidents in states without such access.
The simplest statistical model found that states with recreational marijuana legalization reported about 56.6 fewer IPV incidents per 100,000 residents. When Baldwin added demographic and economic controls, along with state and year fixed effects, the estimated reduction grew to approximately 101.2 incidents per 100,000 people. However, the fixed-effects estimates were statistically significant only at the 90 percent level, a relatively modest threshold.
Those results show an association, not definitive proof that legalization reduced violence. The states in the analysis differed in important ways before legalization. States with recreational marijuana markets had higher median incomes, lower poverty rates and higher educational attainment on average. Although Baldwin’s models attempted to account for some of these differences, other factors—such as reporting practices, policing, access to victim services and community attitudes toward IPV—may also have influenced the results.
Baldwin proposed one possible explanation: marijuana may substitute for alcohol among some consumers. Alcohol use is a well-established risk factor for IPV, and reducing alcohol consumption could theoretically offset or outweigh any violence risk associated with increased marijuana use. The thesis also found that the relationship between heavy drinking and IPV appeared to differ according to whether a state had legalized recreational marijuana. In states without legalization, a one-percentage-point increase in the share of heavy drinkers was associated with 5.6 fewer reported IPV incidents in the model. In states with legalization, the interaction term indicated roughly eight additional incidents for each percentage-point increase in heavy drinking.
These counterintuitive findings highlight the study’s limitations rather than establish a clear mechanism. Baldwin acknowledged that the analysis could be affected by omitted-variable bias and by the limited number of states reporting usable data. The thesis also noted that state-level data cannot show whether marijuana replaced alcohol within individual households, or whether retail cannabis availability affected violence differently across counties and communities.
Subsequent research has made the picture even less conclusive. A 2024 peer-reviewed study, “High times and troubled relationships: Recreational marijuana laws and intimate partner violence,” examined 39 states from 2006 to 2016 using a difference-in-differences approach. It reported that recreational marijuana laws were associated with a roughly 20 percent increase in IPV incidents per 100,000 people, with mental-health problems and binge drinking identified as possible mediating factors.
The differing results may reflect variations in study periods, states included, definitions of legalization, statistical methods and the way IPV is reported. They may also indicate that legalization affects different populations in different ways. Greater access could reduce some people’s alcohol consumption while increasing cannabis use, co-use of substances or exposure to mental-health risks for others.
Reported crime data also capture only violence that comes to the attention of law enforcement. The FBI’s NIBRS system provides detailed incident-level information, but changes in participation, reporting and police practices can complicate comparisons across states and years. IPV is also underreported, meaning that shifts in reporting behavior may not correspond directly to changes in the underlying prevalence of abuse.
For context, the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey measures victimization through population surveys rather than relying solely on police reports. Such data are important because they can capture experiences that never result in an arrest or formal incident report.
The most defensible conclusion is therefore a cautious one: Baldwin’s thesis identified a negative relationship between recreational marijuana legalization and reported IPV in its sample, but it did not demonstrate that legalization caused violence to decline. Other research has found an increase instead. More detailed studies using individual- and county-level data, consistent measures of retail access and stronger controls for alcohol use, mental health and reporting practices are needed before policymakers can draw firm conclusions.
Any policy response should address marijuana and alcohol together while maintaining robust prevention, victim-support and safety programs. The existing evidence does not justify presenting cannabis legalization as a reliable strategy for reducing intimate partner violence—or as a simple explanation for changes in reported domestic abuse.
