Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Lead photo via Flickr user Elvert Barnes
Outside of overtly racist political posturing and genuine generational disconnect, cannabis prohibition has continued as long as it has largely because of lobbying from the pharmaceutical and alcohol industry, with both multi-billion-dollar behemoths understandably worried that legal access to the easy-to-grow plant would take a significant chunk out of their government-approved intoxication monopoly. Now, with over half of the country living in a state with some form of legalized cannabis, a new study suggests that those fears are well-founded for the alcohol industry.
According to the Washington Post, a working study from researchers at the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University claims that alcohol sales have dropped as much as 15 percent in states with legal medical cannabis, suggesting that further increasing cannabis access with recreational legalization could have an even larger dampening on alcohol sales.
To reach this conclusion, the study’s authors examined Nielsen sales numbers, looking at “data on purchases of alcoholic beverages in grocery, convenience, drug, or mass distribution stores in US…
