This paper uses an unbanked industry to study the impact of government certification on financial access and growth. Marijuana is considered illegal by the Federal law resulting in high financial access costs. I exploit a unique experiment by Washington State that significantly lowered such...

Cannabis is no longer a movement. It is an industry estimated to be worth $50 billion as of January 2019. Currently, 46 states in the United States (the “U.S.”) have laws permitting or decriminalizing marijuana or marijuana-based products. Many of these states are enacting these marijuana...

Over the past two decades deaths from opioids and other drugs have grown to be a major U.S. population health problem, but the magnitude of the crisis varies across the U.S., and explanations for widespread geographic variation in the severity of the drug crisis are limited. An emerging debate...

This paper analyzes whether an investment in cannabis securities would be a breach of fiduciary duty under fiduciary investment standards. This paper considers legality issues arising from marijuana-related securities under criminal statutes and securities laws and the prudence of investing in...

Today's generation of young people (age group 10-24), the largest cohort in history at present, holds great potential for economic and social progress. Unfortunately, misuse of alcohol and illicit drugs is contributing to large numbers of deaths and disabilities for young people in developed...

Over the last two decades there has been considerable movement at the state-level to legalize marijuana, initially for medical purposes and more recently for recreational consumption. Despite prior research, it is unclear how, if at all, these policies are related to rates of opioid-involved...

A number of supply and demand-side indicators provide support for heroin's 're-incubation' in an era of crack cocaine's decline. The present paper assesses the extent to which these and other trends converge with reports of heroin market participants operating on the streets of a large...

Opium and China are synonymous, yet historians have so far failed to answer one key question: why was opium rather than cannabis or coffee so eagerly consumed? This article is a preliminary exploration of the cultural significance and social uses of narcotics from the sixteenth to the...

Drug addiction reflects abnormal operation of normal neural circuitry. More than physical dependence, addiction represents changes in the brain that lead to increased craving and diminished capacity for the control of impulses. Given the growing biological understanding of addiction, it is...

In 2001, use of the STRIDE data base for the purposes of analyzing drug prices and the impact of public policies on drug markets came under serious attack by the National Research Council (Manski et al., 2001; Horowitz, 2001). While some of the criticisms raised by the committee were valid, many of...