TY  - JOUR
AU  - Williams,Jenny
AU  - Pacula,Rosalie Liccardo
AU  - Chaloupka,Frank J.
AU  - Wechsler,Henry
TI  - Alcohol and Marijuana Use Among College Students: Economic Complements or Substitutes?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8401
PY  - 2001
Y2  - July 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8401
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8401.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jenny Williams
Department of Economics
University of Melbourne VIC 3010
Australia
Tel: 011-61-0466169612
E-Mail: jenny@unimelb.edu.au

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula
RAND Corporation
1776 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138
Tel: 310/393-0411 ext. 6494
Fax: 858/350-8798
E-Mail: pacula@rand.org

Frank J. Chaloupka, IV
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Economics (m/c 144)
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
601 S. Morgan Street, Room 713
Chicago, IL  60607-7121
Tel: 312/413-2287
Fax: 312/996-3344;630/801-8870
E-Mail: fjc@uic.edu

Henry Wechsler
677 Huntington Ave Boston, MA 02115
E-Mail: hwechsle@hsph.harvard.edu
AB  - College campuses have been cracking down on underage and binge drinking in light of recent highly publicized student deaths. Although there is evidence showing that stricter college alcohol policies have been effective at discouraging both drinking in general and frequent binge drinking on college campuses, recent evidence from the Harvard School Of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS) shows that marijuana use among college students rose 22 percent between 1993 and 1999.  Are current policies aimed at reducing alcohol consumption inadvertently encouraging marijuana use?  This paper begins to address this question by investigating the relationship between the demands for alcohol and marijuana for college students using data from the 1993, 1997 and 1999 CAS. We find that alcohol and marijuana are economic complements and that policies that increase the full price of alcohol decrease participation in marijuana use.
ER  -