The Impact of Cannabis Access Laws on Opioid Prescribing
Journal of Health Economics 69 (2020) 102273 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Health Economics j ournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/econbase The impact of cannabis access laws on opioid prescribing a,∗ b c Benjamin J. McMichael , R. Lawrence Van Horn , W. Kip Viscusi a Assistant Professor of Law, University of Alabama School of Law, Box 870382, 101 Paul W. Bryant Drive East, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, United States b Associate Professor of Management and Law, Executive Director of Health Affairs, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, 401 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN, 37203, United States c University Distinguished Professor of Law, Economics, and Management, Vanderbilt University Law School. 131 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN, 37203, United States a r a t i c l e i n f o b s t r a c t Article history: While recent research has shown that cannabis access laws can reduce the use of prescrip- Received 5 October 2018 tion opioids, the effect of these laws on opioid use is not well understood for all dimensions Received in revised form 17 July 2019 of use and for the general United States population. Analyzing a dataset of over 1.5 bil- Accepted 7 December 2019 lion individual opioid prescriptions between 2011 and 2018, which were aggregated to the Available online 14 December 2019 individual provider-year level, we find that recreational and medical cannabis access laws reduce the number of morphine milligram equivalents prescribed each year by 11.8 and 4.2 JEL classification: percent, respectively. These laws also reduce the total days’ supply of opioids prescribed, I180 the total number of patients receiving opioids, and the probability a provider prescribes K19 any opioids net of any offsetting effects.
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