Policy Bundles, Adoption, and Adaptation of State Cannabis Laws

• In Event: Policy Design Complexity, Bundles, and Mixes

Abstract

Despite federal prohibitions on marijuana, states have adopted a range of medical marijuana laws (MML) and recreational marijuana laws (RML) over the last twenty-five years. Proponents have offered a host of rationales for legalizing marijuana such as pain management, social justice, decreased criminal justice expenditures, increased tax revenues, and economic competition from other states. A unique aspect of both MML and RML are the myriad of policy characteristics stipulated in initial adoption and subsequently modified in legislative and/or administrative actions which we utilize a new unique data characterizing each state’s approach. This paper focuses on policy maturation of cannabis policies, examining factors that influence not only adoption, but more importantly the continued actions by states as they modify and implement different approaches to marijuana policies, manifested in underlying characteristics that constitute three distinctive policy bundles. The maturation of marijuana policies using specific policy bundles offer states the opportunity to substantively change the manner in which marijuana laws operate in a post-adoption environment.

Authors

• Grant W. Neeley, University of Dayton

• Lilliard E. Richardson, The Pennsylvania State University