Research

"Deal Or No Deal: The Effect of Legalizing Recreational Marijuana on the Illegal Market and on Border Enforcement" (Link)

Abstract: Recreational marijuana legalization has been a major policy shift in the United States over the last 10 years, with more than 21 states (and Washington D.C.) having codified legalization either through ballot measure or legislation as of 2022. As true whenever a consumer good changes from illegal to legal, this has had major ramifications for the criminal justice system, consumer culture, and markets. In this paper, I examine the effect that recreational legalization has had on the illegal market for marijuana in the Pacific Northwest. My first analysis involves how markets change within states that legalize. I develop a municipality-level measure on whether illegal drug markets were larger (per capita) than the median market and use that in a difference-in-difference analysis, pre- and post-legalization. I find that, post-legalization, municipalities where the illegal drug market was more rampant pre-legalization had less illegal marijuana activity post-legalization, controlling for municipality and year fixed effects. In my second analysis, I examine how markets changed across state borders in heretofore illegal marijuana states relative to their neighbors where marijuana was legalized. I find that municipalities closer to legal dispensaries across the Idaho border had higher arrest rates post-legalization than those that were farther away, while those municipalities in Oregon pre-legalization but post-Washington legalization close to Washington dispensaries were unaffected by Washington legalization.

Eswaran, Vidya, Marin Olson, Johanna Lacoe, Stephen Paolillo, Alissa Skog, Hemal Kanzaria, and Maria Raven. “Drug-Related Arrests among Frequent Emergency Department Users Are Compounded by Housing Status.” Annals of Emergency Medicine 80, no. 4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2022.08.228.

Lacoe, Johanna, Stephen Paolillo, Alissa Skog, and Steve Raphael. “Impacts of Felony Diversion on Health and Housing Outcomes in San Francisco”.

Cawley, Caroline, Jamila Henderson, Hemal Kanzaria, Johanna Lacoe, Stephen Paolillo, Kenneth Perez, Maria Raven, and Alissa Skog (2022). “Signals of Distress: High Utilization of Criminal Legal and Urgent and Emergent Health Services in San Francisco”. California Policy Lab.

Palomino, Francisco, Stephen Paolillo, Ander Perez-Orive, and Gerardo Sanz-Maldonado (2019). "The Information in Interest Coverage Ratios of the US Nonfinancial Corporate Sector". FEDS Notes. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January 10, 2019, https://doi.org/10.17016/2380-7172.2290.

Raven, Maria, Jennifer Evans, Dallas Augustine, Kaitlin DeWilde, Jamila Henderson, Hemal Kanzaria, Stephen Paolillo, Kenneth Perez, Lisa Pratt, Alissa Skog, and Johanna Lacoe (2023). “766 San Francisco Residents may be Eligible for Referral to CARE Court”. California Policy Lab.

"Back to the Joint: Marijuana Legalization and Recidivism of Marijuana Offenders"

"Heterogeneity in Race and Gender from Spillovers from Marijuana Legalization"

"Proposition 47: Felony vs. Misdemeanor Charges and the Effects on Health and Housing Outcomes"