Marijuana and alcohol: Evidence using border analysis and retail sales data

2020/05/01 by Michele Baggio, Alberto Chong, Sungoh Kwon
Health Professions · Medicine · #Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research #Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations #Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

paper · doi:10.1111/caje.12437

openalex publication_date 2020/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Abstract We use retail scanner data on purchases of alcoholic beverages across US counties for 2006 to 2015 to study the link between medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and alcohol consumption. To do this, we exploit differences in the timing of marijuana laws among states and find that they are substitutes. We show that unlike traditional national‐level analysis, focusing on contiguous‐border county pairs provides unbiased estimates of the effect of MMLs on alcohol sales. Specifically, alcohol sales in counties located in MML states decreased by 12.4%. Results are robust to including placebo effective dates for MMLs in treated states.

Citations

• Do medical marijuana laws reduce addictions and deaths related to pain killers?
• The minimum legal drinking age and marijuana use: New estimates from the NLSY97
• The effect of alcohol availability on marijuana use: Evidence from the minimum legal drinking age
• A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference
• Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption
• The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Body Weight

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