Study: less college binge drinking in states where cannabis is legal

According to a recent study by’Oregon State University, published in Addictive Behaviors, students attending a university in a U.S. state with legal access to cannabis are less likely to drink quickly and heavily.

The study analyzed alcohol and cannabis consumption trends from 2008 to 2018, and found a 5-13% decrease in binge drinking among students attending universities in states where adult-use cannabis was legal. Overall, the ten-year study refers to surveys of more than 1.1 million students.

«The biggest takeaway from our article is that alcohol problems among students 21 and older change after cannabis legalization,» a declared Zoe Alley, doctoral student at the’Oregon State University and one of the authors of the study.»

In their conclusion, Alley and his co-authors hypothesized that the statistical shift was likely due to age restrictions and accessibility. In states where cannabis is still illegal, students over the age of 21 would turn more to alcohol rather than risk legal trouble with cannabis.

«Once you reach the age of 21 in states without cannabis legalization, alcohol suddenly becomes very easy to find, relatively speaking, so people might switch to that,» says Oregon State psychology professor David Kerr. «In Oregon, there are a lot of [cannabis] retail stores, and it's advertised,» Kerr says. «We see it on billboards. The stores are very obvious in the way they're decorated and promoted. It looks very available.»

As legalization progresses, the authors of the study hope that greater accessibility to cannabis will help reduce excessive alcohol consumption, as well as the harm resulting from its overconsumption.

«There are a lot of problems with excessive drinking on college campuses - we're talking about sexual assault, impaired driving, alcohol poisoning and lethality,» Alley explained. «If you can bring that down, it's clearly a good thing.»