Study: State Medical Cannabis Laws Significantly Reduce Alcohol Sales

marijuana card

Study: State Medical Cannabis Laws Significantly Reduce Alcohol Sales

States that have legalized medical cannabis have seen a 15% drop in alcohol sales on average, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University.

For the study, researchers used data “on purchases of alcoholic beverages in grocery, convenience, drug, or mass distribution stores in US counties for 2006-2015 to study the link between medical marijuana laws and alcohol consumption and focus on settling the debate between the substitutability or complementarity between marijuana and alcohol.” To do this they exploited the differences in the timing of the of marijuana laws among states and find that these two substances are substitutes.

“Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent”, states the study’s abstract. “Our findings are robust to border counties analysis, a placebo effective dates for MMLs in the treated states, and falsification tests using sales of pens and pencils.”

The full study, published by SSRN, can be found by clicking here.

1 Comment

  • Simon Green
    January 14, 2018

    To many, do think it is a pros or cons? I just hope people uses the marijuana for the benefit of their health issues.

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