Leveraging Policy Design Variation to Assess the Effects of State Cannabis Legalization: A Policy Bundles Approach

Leveraging Policy Design Variation to Assess the Effects of State Cannabis Legalization: A Policy Bundles Approach

Project Team
Daniel Mallinson, Associate Professor, Public Policy and Administration

Project Funding
Commonwealth Campus Funding

Project Description

The overarching goal of this fellowship is to bring together my work on state medical marijuana policy with that of Lillard Richardson who has developed a robust measure of variation in the design of state cannabis laws. Dr. Richardson is an affiliate of the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) and Director of the School of Public Policy at University Park. Dr. Richardson has co-developed the concept of cannabis policy bundles. He has also published on the effects of policy design (e.g., Houston & Lilliard E. Richardson, 2007; Houston & Richardson, 2005). I am also an expert in state cannabis policy but have focused more on questions of federalism and state politics (Hannah & Mallinson, 2018; Hannah et al., 2023; Mallinson & Hannah, 2020, 2023, 2024; Mallinson et al., 2020). To date, 35 states have adopted medical marijuana legalization and 21 have adopted recreational legalization. The effects of these programs are much debated, but not well tested. This project will use bundles as a stronger method for assessing the positive and negative externalities of cannabis liberalization in the United States.