A new research study shows that legalizing recreational marijuana leads to a noticeable spike in junk food sales. This breakthrough in duh comes from Georgia State University economists whose analysis of retail data from states with recreational marijuana laws revealed that "monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.2 percent when measured by sales and 4.5 percent when measured by volume." From The Academic Times:
"You think marijuana does no harm — that's pretty much the consensus today," said Georgia State University economist Alberto Chong in an interview with The Academic Times. "But there are unintended consequences, and one of them is the fact that you really get very hungry and you start eating crap."
The researchers added that while the tendency to binge on junk food after smoking a joint may be a stoner stereotype, their findings have real implications for public policy at a time when more than 40% of American adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention[…]
An earlier version of the paper included a breakdown of junk food sales by type that did not make it into Economics & Human Biology. Legal marijuana boosted sales of ice cream by 3.1%, cookies by 4.1% and chips by 5.3%, according to Chong and Baggio's 2019 working paper…
"Recreational marijuana laws and junk food consumption" (Economics & Human Biology)
