Our research examines how the availability of medical cannabis dispensaries in New York State has affected mental health. We used data gathered between 2011 and 2021 by the New York Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a telephone survey that collects data on respondents’ health, health-related risk behaviors, and sociodemographic characteristics. The survey asked respondents how many days in the past month they experienced poor mental health.
New York had legal medical cannabis dispensaries—but not legal recreational cannabis dispensaries—between 2015 and 2021. Like most other states with medical but not recreational cannabis, people were required to purchase medical cannabis at state-licensed dispensaries. Thus, medical dispensary openings created variation in how close people’s homes were to dispensaries. We gathered data on all medical cannabis dispensaries in New York, including the dates they opened. Then, we calculated the drive times between the zip codes of each survey respondent and the nearest dispensary. Using the survey data, we compared the self-reported mental health of adults who lived near a medical cannabis dispensary with those who did not. Our approach accounted for respondents’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, zip code characteristics, and overall trends in self-reported mental health.
We have two key findings. First, medical cannabis availability was not associated with self-reported poor mental health for adults overall. Specifically, living within a 30-minute drive of a medical cannabis dispensary did not increase the probability that respondents reported having any poor mental health days in the past month. Second, medical cannabis availability improved self-reported mental health among people aged 65 years and older. For this subgroup, living within a 30-minute drive of a dispensary decreased the probability of having a poor mental health day in the past month by about 10 percent, a 3.5 percentage point decrease from an original probability of roughly 36 percent.
What may explain our finding that medical cannabis availability improves the self-reported mental health of people aged 65 and above? Likely pain relief. Cannabis is a good treatment for chronic pain caused by nerve disease (neuropathy)—the most common justification for medical cannabis and a common chronic condition among older adults. The pain relief explanation is also consistent with prior studies that found that cannabis legalization reduces opioid prescriptions.
Our results demonstrate that the locations of cannabis dispensaries have a large effect on whether cannabis legalization affects consumers. This is an important consideration for state regulators considering medical and recreational cannabis legalization and how to approach the proliferation of nondispensary businesses selling close cannabis substitutes, such as Delta 8, THCP, and THCA.
Our findings also suggest there is an urgent need to learn more about how cannabis use affects older adults. The federal government has heavily restricted clinical research involving cannabis for decades. President Biden reduced many of these restrictions by signing the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act into law in December 2022; however, clinical evidence on the health effects of cannabis will likely remain limited for years to come. In the meantime, policymakers should consider evidence from economic studies and the experiences of other countries that have legalized cannabis, such as Canada and Germany, as well as those that will legalize cannabis in the future.
