Thursday, February 01, 2024

Marijuana: Beer Substitute, Ice Cream Complement

See Marijuana Legalization and Econ 101 by John Phelan, an economist at Center of the American Experiment. Very interesting article. Excerpts:

"In a 2019 study titled ‘Recreational Marijuana Laws and Junk Food Consumption: Evidence Using Border Analysis and Retail Sales Data’, economists Michele Baggio and Alberto Chong collected monthly sales data from supermarkets, drug stores, and other retailers in more than 2,000 counties across 48 states covering the period from 2006 to 2016. By comparing sales figures from neighboring counties located along state borders—some where marijuana was legal and some where it was not—they were able to estimate the effect of marijuana legalization on junk-food sales. 

They found that after recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, the only states for which 18 months of sales data were available, sales of ice cream rose by 3.1%, sales of cookies increased by 4.1%, and sales of crisps jumped by 5.3% in the years after the laws were passed. This is good news for Kwik Trips in Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas."

"In a 2018 paper titledMarijuana and Alcohol Evidence Using Border Analysis and Retail Sales Data’, Baggio, Chong, and Sungoh Kwon used “retail scanner data on purchases of alcoholic beverages across US counties for 2006-2015 to study the link between medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and alcohol consumption.” They found that “counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 12.4 percent.”"

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