title: Attitudes to legalizing cannabis use.
abstract: In this paper, we investigate the relationship between cannabis use and attitudes to legalizing the use of cannabis. Predictions from theory provide a means of learning about the roles of information, self interest and regret in explaining differences in attitudes to legalization between those who currently use, those who have used in the past and those who have never used. Our empirical investigation suggests that users have a greater awareness of cannabis not being as harmful as abstainers think it is. This may explain why individuals are more inclined to be in favor of legalizing cannabis once they have used it themselves. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.|IZA, Germany.
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.|Department of Economics, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands.|IZA, Germany.
authors.forename: Jan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: van Ours
authors.affiliation: National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.|IZA, Germany.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Grossman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001315:Australia; D002188:Cannabis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007880:Legislation, Drug; D008297:Male; D008385:Marijuana Smoking / Q000191:economics / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011634:Public Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders
keywords: cannabis use; learning by doing; synthetic panel data