According to three researchers, the legalization of marijuana is reducing alcohol consumption.
The three researchers have used detailed scanner data of alcohol sales to prove their theory and picked out states that had medical marijuana legalized. Each count’s level of alcohol sales were measured and they compared it to alcohol sales in states that did not have legal medical marijuana.
According to the results, the trio said, “We find that marijuana and alcohol are strong substitutes. Counties located in MML states reduced monthly alcohol sales by 15 percent, which is a consistent finding across several empirical specifications.
When disaggregating by beer and wine we find that legalization of medical marijuana had a negative effect on corresponding sales by as much as 13.8 and 16.2 percent, respectively.
