High times and troubled relationships: Recreational marijuana laws and intimate partner violence.

This study explores the relationship between Recreational Marijuana Laws (RMLs) and intimate partner violence (IPV). While marijuana is often considered harmless, the existing medical literature reveals both positive and negative impacts of its active ingredient on brain function. Utilizing a difference-in-difference methodology spanning 2006-2016 across 39 states, we find that RMLs produce a 20 percent increase in IPV incidents per 100,000 individuals, which appears to be mediated through mental health issues and binge drinking. These findings highlight the likely need for preventive and proactive policies to address the complex interplay of marijuana, RMLs, and IPV.

Recreational marijuana laws and junk food consumption.

We use retail scanner data on purchases of high calorie food to study the causal relationship between recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) and consumption of high calorie food. To do this we exploit differences in the timing of introduction of recreational marijuana laws among states and find that they are complements. Specifically, in counties located in RML states monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.2 percent when measured by sales and 4.5 percent when measured by volume when using our preferred identification strategy. Results are robust to including placebo effective dates for RMLs in treated states and products as well as when using Synthetic Control Methods as an alternative methodology.

Sex, marijuana and baby booms.

We study the behavioral changes caused by marijuana use on sexual activity, contraception, and birth counts by applying a differences-in-differences approach that exploits the variation in timing of the introduction of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) among states. We find that MMLs cause an increase in sexual activity, a reduction in contraceptive use conditional on having sex, and an increase in number of births. There is also suggestive evidence on temporary increases in the state-year gonorrhea rate. These changes may be attributed to behavioral responses including increased attention to the immediate hedonic effects of sexual contact, increased sexual frequency, as well as delayed discounting and ignoring the future costs associated with sex. Our findings on births suggest that behavioral factors can counteract the physiological changes from marijuana use that tend to decrease fertility. Our findings are robust to a broad set of tests.