Liquor stores may be seeing a decline in sales as recent studies have shown that binge drinking has declined among younger Americans as recreational cannabis has become legal.
The study, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, found that past-month binge drinking, defined as having five or more drinks for men and four or more drinks for women in a single drinking session, declined overall among people ages 12 to 30.
The study also found that binge drinking increased among people ages 31 and older from 2008 to 2019.
The most substantial decline in binge drinking came from the 12 to 20 age range, dropping from 18% reporting past-month binge drinking in 2008 to 11% in 2019. For respondents ages 21 to 30, that number fell from 44% in 2008 to 40% in 2019.
Even though binge drinking saw overall increases in every U.S. state, regardless of cannabis laws, in those aged 31 and older, the largest increase came in those aged 31 to 40, jumping from 28% to 33% from 2008 to 2019.
Researchers from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health shared that until now, the relationship between recreational cannabis laws and binge drinking has “been limited to data from just a few states, small study samples, and combined age groups.”
Because of this, researchers say they aren’t sure how the substances being legal will affect the way Americans consume them.
Priscila Dib Gonçalves, the first author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow in the Substance Abuse Epidemiology program in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, shared that there are two possible outcomes of legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
Dib Gonçalves says that either both cannabis and alcohol use will increase once the drug is legalized, with people using both substances or alcohol use will decrease after cannabis legalization, “as individuals may use cannabis instead of alcohol when both are readily available.”
Even with data showing binge drinking is on the decline for certain demographics, Dib Gonçalves says that it still remains to be seen what the inevitable outcome will be.
“Evidence regarding these hypotheses remains inconclusive, especially regarding how cannabis legalization may impact binge drinking across different age groups,” Dib Gonçalves said.
The one thing that researchers did agree on was that more research was required to better understand how legalizing recreational marijuana would impact alcohol consumption.
“It is worth noting that cannabis legislation is complex, involving multiple policy decisions, including regulations of supply chain and operation: government monopoly, retail sales, legal home cultivation, advertisement, types of products distributed, prices, and taxes, and each state may have different policies when regulating recreational cannabis use,” Silvia Martins, the lead author of the study, shared. “As the cannabis legislative landscape continues to change in the U.S., efforts to minimize harms related to binge drinking are critical.”
H/T: www.audacy.com
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