These days, Americans shop for nearly everything online—including marijuana. That’s the conclusion of a new study published today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine led by San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health associate research professor John W. Ayers. Millions are searching for and finding online marijuana retailers across the country, the researchers find.
The team monitored Google searches in the United States between January 2005 and June 2017, including all searches with the terms marijuana, weed, pot, or cannabis combined with the terms buy, shop, or order (for example., “buy marijuana”). They omitted similar but irrelevant searches like “buy weed killer.” The team then replicated the relevant searches and checked to see whether the resulting websites advertised mail-order marijuana.
“By studying anonymized, aggregate Internet searches and…