by Brendan Kiley • Aug 21, 2015 at 12:17 pm

Yesterday, state traffic-safety officials released some alarming-sounding news: In 2014, the year recreational pot stores opened for business in Washington, the number of fatal car crashes involving THC doubled.

And that, of course, is awful—every fatal car crash is awful. “This is particularly affecting young men,” says Shelly Baldwin of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission (WTSC). According to WTSC data, fatal car crashes involving men from age 21 to 25 with THC in their system tripled from six in 2013 to 19 in 2014.

But before we jump to the legalizing-marijuana-means-highway-death conclusions that some headline writers and Republican speechwriters will inevitably exploit, let's take a closer look at the numbers. I want to be very clear: I'm not minimizing the suffering of people who've lost loved ones to car crashes, particularly car crashes involving impaired drivers. But drug-policy reform is a high-stakes game, locally and internationally, so it's important to look at this new data with clear eyes.