Fig. 1

A directed acyclic graph is presented to demonstrate confounders at the population and individual level that may affect the exposure (state’s COVID-19 policy) and the outcome (individual level sharing of cannabis) of interest. These variables included state-level cannabis legality status, state-level COVID-19 infection prevalence, state-level percent urbanicity, state’s Census level region, state-level age distribution, and individual-level age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, and sharing of cannabis before the COVID-19 pandemic. Measured variables are indicated with a solid box around the variable and unmeasured variables have a dashed box around them. Solid arrows depict the causal pathway and dotted arrows depict the measure of interest