Researchers from the University of Georgia and Syracuse University have found that marijuana legalization is connected to a decreased interest in alcohol.

Interest in alcohol declines after states legalize marijuana said the study published in the journal Marketing Science, which analyzed online behavior.

The researchers looked to identify the cross-commodity effects of legalization. They used data from a “leading US-based web portal” from January 2014 to April 2017 to observe how the implementation of adult-use legal marijuana programs in states changed online behavior such as web searches and engagement with advertisements.

The researchers wrote that the data set “covers over 28 million searches and 120 million ad impressions related to cannabis, alcohol and tobacco industries.”

Legalization “reduces search volume and advertising effectiveness for alcohol, but increases those for tobacco,” the authors wrote. “Hence, cannabis appears a substitute to alcohol, but not to tobacco.”

“Contrary to widely held public concern after recreational cannabis is legalized, teenagers appear to lose interest, rather than gain interest,” study author Pengyuan Wang said in a press release. “Policymakers only concerned with an uptick in teen users, may want to rethink their stance.”


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