In states where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for medications used to treat anxiety. That is the key finding of my recent study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open. Author
Ashley Bradford Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
I am an applied policy researcher who studies the economics of risky behaviors and substance use within the United States. My collaborators and I wanted to understand how medical and recreational marijuana laws and marijuana dispensary openings have affected the rate at which patients fill prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications among people who have private medical insurance.
These include: Benzodiazepines , which work by increasing the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA , a neurotransmitter that elicits a calming effect by reducing activity in the nervous system. This category includes the depressants Valium, Xanax and Ativan, among others.
Antipsychotics , a class of drug that addresses psychosis symptoms in a variety of ways.
Antidepressants , which relieve symptoms of depression by affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. The most well-known example of these is selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs .
We also included barbiturates , which are sedatives, and sleep medications – sometimes called "Z-drugs" – both of which are used to treat insomnia. In contrast to the other three categories, we did not estimate any policy impacts for either of these types of drugs.
We find consistent evidence that increased marijuana access is associated with reductions in benzodiazepine prescription fills. "Fills" refer to the number of prescriptions being picked up by patients, rather than the number of prescriptions doctors write. This is based on calculating the rate of individual patients who filled a prescription in a state, the average days of supply per prescription fill, and average prescription fills per patient.
Notably, we found that not all state policies led to similar changes in prescription fill patterns. Why it matters In 2021, nearly 23% of the adult U.S. population reported having a diagnosable mental health disorder. Yet only 65.4% of those individuals reported receiving treatment within […]
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