Medical marijuana being legally available “improved self-reported mental health among people aged 65 years and older,” according to a new study.
Among adults overall, “medical cannabis availability was not associated with self-reported poor mental health,” it adds. “Collectively, these results suggest medical cannabis availability has limited mental health effects on the population at large, with considerable mental health benefits for older adults.”
For people 65 and older, authors noted that living within 30 minutes of a dispensary “decreased the probability having a poor mental health day in the past month by about 10 percent,” which they point out was “a 3.5 percentage point decrease from an original probability of roughly 36 percent.”
“What may explain our finding that medical cannabis availability improves the self-reported mental health of people aged 65 and above? Likely pain relief,” the research brief from authors at the libertarian Cato Institute says. “Cannabis is a good treatment for chronic pain caused by nerve disease (neuropathy)—the most common justification for medical cannabis and a common chronic condition among older adults.”
The study used geographic data to” estimate medical cannabis dispensary availability’s effects on self-reported mental health in New York state from 2011 through 2021 using a two-stage difference-in-differences approach to minimize bias introduced from the staggered opening of dispensaries,” the paper says.
Hellbound and Down 