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Effects of state education requirements for substance use prevention
Author(s) -
Carpenter Christopher S.,
Bruckner Tim A.,
Domina Thurston,
Gerlinger Julie,
Wakefield Sara
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.3830
Subject(s) - substance use , psychological intervention , state (computer science) , difference in differences , environmental health , psychology , medicine , psychiatry , economics , computer science , econometrics , algorithm
We provide the first evidence on the effects of state laws requiring students to receive education about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs using data on over a million youths from the 1976–2010 Monitoring the Future study. In difference‐in‐differences and event‐study models, we find robust evidence that these laws significantly reduced recent alcohol and marijuana use among high school seniors by 1.6–2.8 percentage points, or about 8–10% of the overall decline over this period. Our results suggest that information interventions can reduce youth substance use.