New Study Says Marijuana Legalization Reduces Alcohol Use

Back in 2009 I wrote a piece for the magazine about marijuana legalization. One of the things I learned is that a key question about the effect of legalization is whether marijuana and alcohol are substitutes or complements.

If alcohol and marijuana are substitutes, it means that higher sales of marijuana will likely produce lower sales of alcohol. This would, generally speaking, be a good thing, since marijuana smoking is less hazardous than alcohol on multiple levels: It does less physiological damage to the imbiber and less damage to others (drunks tend to get mean while smokers tend to get stoned).

However, if alcohol and marijuana are complements, then higher sales of marijuana are likely to lead to higher sales of alcohol too. There would be nothing good about this.

A trio of researchers recently tried to settle this question using detailed scanner data of alcohol sales. Their methodology was fairly simple: they picked out states that had enacted medical marijuana laws and measured sales of alcohol at the county level. For each state that passed an MML law, they compared its alcohol sales to states that hadn’t legalized medical marijuana. Here’s what they found:

In order to test substitutability, the authors created a parameter associated with alcohol sales. They set the parameter so that it was (on average) the same in all states before medical marijuana laws were enacted. In the chart above, this is why the pre-MML data points cluster around zero. Then they tracked the parameter over time and found that after MML laws were enacted, sales of alcohol were lower in the MML states:

We find that marijuana and alcohol are strong substitutes. Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent, which is a consistent finding across several empirical specifications. When disaggregating by beer and wine we find that legalization of medical marijuana had a negative effect on corresponding sales by as much as 13.8 and 16.2 percent, respectively.

The authors also measured sales of alcohol in border counties. The effect was the same: after medical marijuana laws were enacted, counties in MML states had lower alcohol sales than counties across the state border.

There are a few caveats here. First, it’s based on scanner data, but not all alcohol is sold in stores. Second, as usual for studies like this, the authors control for a wide range of things: “county economic conditions such as unemployment rate and median household income…total population, percentage of male and Hispanic population, and the share of population by age groups.” Is that enough? Is it too much? It’s always hard to tell.

There’s more to marijuana than just this, but it’s nonetheless positive news. If it holds up, it’s yet another reason that legalizing marijuana is, on net, probably a good thing.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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