A new study concludes that cannabis reforms at the state level are associated with “small but sometimes significant long-term declines in adult smoking.”
Researchers found “consistent” evidence that state recreational marijuana laws led to an increase in cannabis use by adults – between two and four percentage point increases, depending on data sources – but tobacco did not follow this trend.
The study concluded that if the apparent substitution effect of marijuana for cigarettes, which is being driven by legalization, were to be extended nationwide, it could lead to healthcare cost savings of more than $10 billion each year.
They wrote: “We find no empirical support for the claim that RMLs lead to an increase in net tobacco consumption, when measured over a range of combustible products and [e-cigarettes].” The overwhelming evidence indicates that adult tobacco consumption has been declining over time, albeit in small but sometimes significant amounts.
We conclude that [recreational cannabis laws] could have health benefits related to tobacco.”
Researchers at Bentley University, San Diego State and Georgia State Universities published their findings in the Journal of Health Economics, last month. They called the study “the first comprehensive examination of the impact of legalizing recreational marijuana on tobacco use.” It draws on federal data collected by the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health and the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
In a time when public support for legalizing cannabis is surging, the researchers wrote, “public Health experts have taken more caution, urging further research to assess health benefits and costs, as well to understand potential unintended effects on other health behavior.”
Since 1964, the smoking rate has dropped dramatically among both male and female adults. For men, it’s gone from 55 to 16 percent; for women it went from 35 to 12 percent. The study admits that “while the causes of the declines are a subject of much discussion,” most public health experts want to preserve the gains.
The authors of the study admit that their analysis shows that legalization results in “a statistically insignificant 0.5-0.7 percentage point decline in tobacco consumption,” including cigarettes, pipe tobaccos, smokeless tobaccos and cigars. This null effect, however, masks the small, delayed tobacco effects of RMLs. We find that three or more years after the adoption of a RML, adult tobacco use drops by approximately 1.4-2.7 percentage points.
They continue: “While the overall treatment effect may be small, three or more years after RML implementation, we found evidence of a statistically-significant 1.1 to 1.3% decline in adult cigarette consumption.”
The study analyzed the states that legalized marijuana earlier than other states. The study says that the results “provide some evidence that smoking rates declined in many of the states that adopted RML first, including Colorado and Washington. These are also the states that experienced the greatest increase in marijuana consumption following RML’s enactment.”
Legalization is associated with a delayed reduction in the use of electronic nicotine delivery systems. This is consistent with an hypothesis that marijuana and ENDS are substitutes.
Researchers found that in states where tobacco is legal, the decline in smoking was “mainly concentrated among men” and “for RMLs that have open recreational dispensaries.” These findings are in line with their hypothesis that tobacco and recreational marijuana may be substitutes in some cases.
The paper states that the potential savings in health care costs resulting from a switch from smoking to cannabis could be “substantial.”
It concludes that “[O]ur estimations suggest a reduction of smoking prevalence by up to 5.1 million. This translates into savings in tobacco-related healthcare costs of approximately $10.2 billion each year.”
The study points out that because most states have legalized cannabis, they first passed laws governing medical marijuana (MMLs). This could lead to confusion between the RML and MML effects in the long run.
PATH data analysis also led to similar conclusions. The authors conclude that “Consistently with the NSDUH we find no evidence of RML adoption increasing prior-month combustible smoking or [e-cigarette] usage.” “While estimated lagged effects are positive in most cases for cigarette use, cigar use, and all combustible tobacco products, the effects are uniformly below a percentage-point–often under 0.5 percentage-points–and not statistically distinguishable from zero at conventional levels.”
The study also found that “there is no evidence to suggest that RML adoption increases the initiation of tobacco among baseline non-users, or decreases cessation in baseline tobacco users.”
Researchers said that legalization led to an increase of 1.2-1.3 percentage points in the use of both tobacco and marijuana. They attributed this to “marijuana introduction among the subpopulation of people who had already been using tobacco before the policy change.”
A Gallup survey published in 2010 found that more Americans smoke marijuana now than cigarettes. In a Monmouth University poll conducted in October, the majority of Americans believed that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than cannabis.
A federally-funded study published in the first half of this year showed that CBD can help reduce nicotine cravings, and even help people stop using.
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The article States that legalize marijuana see reduced tobacco use, study finds first appeared on Marijuana Moment.
