Do-It-Yourself medicine? The impact of light cannabis liberalization on prescription drugs

Vincenzo Carrieri, Leonardo Madio and Francesco Principe

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Governments worldwide are increasingly concerned about the booming use of CBD (cannabidiol) products. However, we know little about the impact of their liberalization. We study a unique case of unintended liberalization of a CBD-based product (light cannabis) that occurred in Italy in 2017. Using unique and high-frequency data on prescription drug sales and by exploiting the staggered local availability of the new product in each Italian province, we document a significant substitution effect between light cannabis and anxiolytics, sedatives, opioids, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. Results are informative for regulators and suggest that bans on light cannabis use would disregard the needs of patients to seek effective reliefs of their symptoms.

Keywords: Light cannabis; self-medication; marijuana; difference-in-difference; prescription drugs; CBD. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-law
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02945943v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published in Journal of Health Economics, 2020, 74, ⟨10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102371⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02945943v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do-It-Yourself medicine? The impact of light cannabis liberalization on prescription drugs (2020)
Working Paper: Do-It-Yourself Medicine? The Impact of Light Cannabis Liberalization on Prescription Drugs (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02945943

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102371

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().