People Who Can Legally Get High Spend Less On Booze

Researchers from two US universities and one from Peru suggests that a reduction in overall alcohol consumption in the US may be directly related to the rise of medical marijuana laws.

Do you know what it's called when multiple universities and authors get together to work on a single study? A JOINT STUDY! Fitting.

The study is titled Helping Settle the Marijuana and Alcohol Debate: Evidence from Scanner Data and was presented by Michele Baggio and Sungoh Kwon from University of Connecticut as well as Alberto Chong from Georgia State University and Universidad del Pacifico in Lima, Peru.

Alcohol sales data from Nielson for 90 varying chain stores (supermarkets, convenience stores, drug stores, etc) between 2006-2015. If you're wondering if only medical marijuana was studied, it seems as though the answer is yes. The dates during which the Nielsen data was collected predate the legalization of recreational cannabis that started in 2012.

Using the Nielsen data, the researchers compared sales of alcohol in states which do not have laws permitting the medical use of cannabis with states that do permit the use, before and after the implementation of those laws. The data showed that counties in states which allow the medical use of cannabis saw a nearly 15 percent decrease in monthly alcohol sales.

Data from California show that individuals who are able to obtain cannabis legally do reduce their alcohol intake. A 2016 analysis of beer sales in legal states Colorado, Oregon, and Washington indicate that retail sales “collectively underperformed” in the years following the legalization of recreational cannabis use by adults in those states.

Personally, cannabis has most certainly led me to spend less on alcohol. I almost never drink any hard liquor anymore, but I am and have always been (okay, maybe not always) a fan of craft beer, with a penchant for particularly dank IPAs. I can drink them like they're going out of style, but unlike with cannabis, it certainly affects my day if I overdo it.

Speaking of which, for the first time ever, craft beer surpassed 10% share of the entire US beer industry.

That's a pretty big feat, but that still means that the big companies are making 90%. Why is that never good enough?

Is that a decent sign for the growing legal cannabis industry? No doubt there are always going to be people who absolutely nothing but the freshest, dankest, strongest herb. The cost involved in producing that sort of quality may be too much for companies with boards of directors to answer to, but maybe not to someone who truly loves to grow cannabis.

Or will the allure of really cheap concentrates you can get anywhere going to be too much for some people?

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