Two of the biggest arguments marijuana advocates use in their nationwide push to legalize pot: It doesn’t lead to more kids using it, and even if it did, it’s the least risky of all recreational drugs. One online outlet dedicated to all thing pot even goes so far as to say, “Cannabis is literally 114 times safer to use than alcohol.”

No so on either front, a new report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) office shows. The latest HIDTA numbers show a dramatic spike in traffic-related fatalities in Colorado attributed to marijuana use in the almost four years since the state legalized the drug.

Marijuana-related traffic fatalities in Colorado have increased 62 percent since 2013.

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Drivers testing positive for marijuana were a factor in 21 percent of all Colorado traffic deaths in 2015; that is up from only 10 percent in 2009.

At the same time, Colorado now ranks No. 1 in past-month marijuana use among youths and college-age adults. Moreover, youth past-month use is now 74 percent higher than the national average, up from 39 percent higher than the national average in 2011-12.

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“This information, compiled from publicly available statistics, is yet another example of hard data demonstrating what we have already suspected to be true: that legalized marijuana policies have a tremendously negative — and costly — impact on public health and safety, especially on our roads,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), in a statement. “Reports like this continue to prove that corporate, commercial interests are being prioritized over the well-being of our communities.”

The increasing frequency of marijuana use correlates with a higher frequency of traffic deaths related to the drug, the study shows. Marijuana-related traffic fatalities in Colorado have increased 62 percent since 2013, immediately after marijuana was legalized. And despite medical and recreational marijuana businesses being banned in 68 percent of local jurisdictions, there are still a total of 940 retail marijuana stores and marijuana dispensaries in Colorado, more than all the 322 Starbucks locations and 202 McDonald’s restaurants in the state combined.

Marijuana advocates are crying foul, saying the data is flawed. Authors of the study, however, stand by the numbers, telling KOAA News, the NBC affiliate in Pueblo, Colorado, that the information is out there for anyone to review on their own.

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“These outcomes are certainly not what Colorado voters intended when they were promised ‘controls.’ It is time Colorado policy makers are held accountable to protect the citizens who were duped by the marijuana industry,” said Jo McGuire, co-chair of SAM’s Colorado affiliate and president and CEO of 5 Minutes of Courage, a Colorado advocacy group for drug-free communities, workplaces, and youth.

“Colorado has become a corporate free-for-all for pot businesses,” Jeffrey Zinsmeister, SAM’s executive vice president, added. “As the report shows, the marijuana industry is rapidly becoming the next Big Tobacco, placing profits before public health and public safety.”

“Although cannabis is commonly thought to reduce motivation, this is the first time it has been reliably tested and quantified,” said one researcher.

The HIDTA numbers come as another study shows smoking the equivalent of a single “spliff” of cannabis makes people less willing to work for money while high.

The research, published in Psychopharmacology and from University College London, focuses on the short-term effects of cannabis on motivation in humans. The study also looked at motivation in people who were addicted to cannabis but not high during the test, and found that their motivation levels were no different to volunteers in the control group.

“Although cannabis is commonly thought to reduce motivation, this is the first time it has been reliably tested and quantified using an appropriate sample size and methodology,” lead author Dr. Will Lawn (of UCL Clinical Psychopharmacology) said in a statement.