title: The effects of medical marijuana laws on illegal marijuana use.
abstract: More and more states have passed laws that allow individuals to use marijuana for medical purposes. There is an ongoing, heated policy debate over whether these laws have increased marijuana use among non-patients. In this paper, I address that question empirically by studying marijuana possession arrests in cities from 1988 to 2008. I estimate fixed effects models with city-specific time trends that can condition on unobserved heterogeneities across cities in both their levels and trends. I find that these laws increase marijuana arrests among adult males by about 15-20%. These results are further validated by findings from data on treatment admissions to rehabilitation facilities: marijuana treatments among adult males increased by 10-20% after the passage of medical marijuana laws.
authors.affiliation: School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington, RH 304, 23 Lambton Quay, Pipitea Campus, Wellington 6140, New Zealand. Electronic address: Luke.Chu@vuw.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Yu-Wei Luke
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Chu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000465:Algorithms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D035846:Law Enforcement; D008297:Male; D002189:Marijuana Abuse; D008385:Marijuana Smoking / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D064086:Medical Marijuana; D014481:United States; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D064086:Medical Marijuana
keywords: Drug arrest; Illegal drug use; Marijuana; Marijuna abuse; Medical marijuana; Medical marijuana laws; Substance treatment