The spillover effect of cigarette taxes on youth marijuana use has been the subject of intense public debate. Opponents of cigarette taxes warn that tax hikes will cause youths to substitute toward marijuana. On the other hand, public health experts often claim that because tobacco is a...

Drug overdose deaths, primarily due to opioid addiction, have devastated communities in almost every area of the U.S. The economic impacts of the crisis include additional healthcare resources, unemployment, lost productivity, criminal justice costs, and other indirect impacts that have not yet...

While it is common for United Nations member states in international meetings to espouse ‘public health approaches’ to drug policy, actual policies appear not to have caught up with this rhetoric. There is a lingering over-emphasis in narcotic drug policies on policing and incarceration at...

In this paper, I propose a life cycle model of painkiller consumption that combines the theory of health deficit accumulation with the theory of addiction. Chronic pain is conceptualized as a persistent negative shock to lifetime utility that can be treated by pain relief medication. Individuals...

A non-trivial portion of traffic fatalities involve alcohol or illicit drugs. But does substance use-which is linked to depression, suicide, and criminal activity-also reduce academic performance? Recent studies suggest that the consumption of alcohol has a negative effect on the grades of...

Over the last two decades, the number of delivering mothers using or dependent on opiates has increased dramatically, giving rise to a five-fold increase in the proportion of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). First, the current study documents NAS trends in the United States...

The debate about the prohibition of drugs has taken a fundamental turn with the publication of ‘Regulation: The Responsible Control of Drugs’ by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. This edition of the journal publishes papers addressing how to regulate drugs, which informed the Global...

There are good reasons to legally regulate drugs markets, rather than persist with efforts to ban all non-medical uses of psychoactive substances. Regulated cannabis and coca markets are already a reality in several countries, with more likely to follow. But ignoring or denying that such policy...

In this paper, I propose a life cycle model of painkiller consumption that combines the theory of health deficit accumulation with the theory of addiction. Chronic pain is conceptualized as a persistent negative shock to lifetime utility that can be treated by pain relief medication. Some...

This paper is the result of the study Apreensões de drogas no estado de São Paulo: Um raio-x das apreensões de drogas segundo ocorrências e massa [Drug Seizures in the State of São Paulo: An In-Depth View of Drug Seizures Broken Down by Number of Incidents and Drug Amounts], conducted by...

"Interest in LEGAL Marijuana or Cannabis is growing everywhere. It's in the news. It's a big topic among politicians. CBD is entering everyday products and CBD stores are popping up everywhere. It's legalization is supported by a majority of Americans and people around the world. But with laws...

In this paper, I propose a life cycle model of painkiller consumption that combines the theory of health deficit accumulation with the theory of addiction. Chronic pain is conceptualized as a persistent negative shock to lifetime utility that can be treated by pain relief medication. Some...