Recreational marijuana laws and junk food consumption

Michele Baggio and Alberto Chong

Economics & Human Biology, 2020, vol. 39, issue C

Abstract: We use retail scanner data on purchases of high calorie food to study the causal relationship between recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) and consumption of high calorie food. To do this we exploit differences in the timing of introduction of recreational marijuana laws among states and find that they are complements. Specifically, in counties located in RML states monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.2 percent when measured by sales and 4.5 percent when measured by volume when using our preferred identification strategy. Results are robust to including placebo effective dates for RMLs in treated states and products as well as when using Synthetic Control Methods as an alternative methodology.

Keywords: Junk food; Diff-in-Diff; Recreational marijuana laws; Synthetic controls (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:39:y:2020:i:c:s1570677x20301921

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2020.100922

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