Legal marijuana increases sales of junk food
It turns out that stoners enjoy eating fast food. Who knew? A new study has linked the legalisation of marijuana with an increase in demand for salty, sweet fast food. Economists at Georgia State University say that “monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.2 percent when measured by sales and 4.5 percent when measured by volume.”
“You think marijuana does no harm – that’s pretty much the consensus today,” said Georgia State University economist Alberto Chong in an interview with The Academic Times. “But there are unintended consequences, and one of them is the fact that you really get very hungry and you start eating crap.”
The researchers added that while the tendency to binge on junk food after smoking a joint may be a stoner stereotype, their findings have real implications for public policy at a time when more than 40% of American adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
An earlier version of the paper included a breakdown of junk food sales by type that did not make it into Economics & Human Biology. Legal marijuana boosted sales of ice cream by 3.1%, cookies by 4.1% and chips by 5.3%, according to Chong and Baggio’s 2019 working paper…
But is more weed being smoked than when it was illegal? Cannabis was hardly tricky to get back then, which was one of the drivers to legalisation. Walk down pretty much any street in the UK and you can smell the skunk. Attempts to control it are futile. The new prudery is about food that makes you fat. You can be stoned, but if you’re fat, the State will really monster you.
Posted: 16th, January 2021 | In: News, The Consumer Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
