Colorado's suicide rate

Advocates point to Colorado’s high suicide rate as evidence of what legal cannabis does to a state. The number they cite is roughly accurate. The story they attach to it is not.

The number, in context

For the mid-2010s, Colorado’s age-adjusted suicide rate sat near 23 per 100,000, against a national rate closer to 15. That is about 50 percent higher, which matches the claim. What the claim leaves out is that this gap is not new.

Colorado has run well above the national suicide rate for decades, long before recreational sales began in 2014. It is one of the Mountain-West states that public-health researchers have long grouped together as the “suicide belt.”

What actually drives it

The factors researchers consistently point to have nothing to do with cannabis:

• Altitude. The highest-rate counties in the country sit above 9,000 feet.
• Firearm access and method.
• Rural isolation and limited access to mental-health care.
• A population skewed toward middle-aged and older men, the highest-risk group.

Neighboring high-altitude states with very different cannabis laws, such as Wyoming and Montana, show the same elevated pattern. If legalization were the driver, that pattern would not predate it and would not appear in states without it.

Why it matters

Citing a real number to imply a cause it does not support is a specific kind of misleading. The suicide rate in Colorado is a genuine public-health tragedy with well-documented causes. Folding it into a cannabis talking point does not honor it. It uses it.

Sources

• University of Colorado School of Medicine, research on altitude and suicide.
• Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Vital Statistics.
• Colorado Health Institute; CDC WONDER mortality data.