The most rigorous study yet of the effects of marijuana legalization has identified a disturbing result: College students with access to recreational cannabis on average earn worse grades and fail classes at a higher rate.
Economists Olivier Marie and Ulf Zölitz took advantage of a decision by Maastricht, a city in the Netherlands, to change the rules for “cannabis cafes,” which legally sell recreational marijuana.
The research on more than 4,000 students, published in the Review of Economic Studies, found that those who lost access to legal marijuana showed substantial improvement in their grades.
Specifically, those banned from cannabis cafes had a more than 5 percent increase in their odds of passing their courses.
Low performing students benefited even more, which the researchers noted is particularly important because these students are at high-risk of dropping out.
Other studies have tried to estimate the impact of marijuana legalization by studying those U.S. states that legalized medicinal or recreational marijuana.
This methodological problem was resolved in the Maastricht study because the marijuana policy change was imposed without input from those whom it affected. »
