# Associations of Exposure to Marijuana Outlets and Advertising with Marijuana Use Outcomes Among Young Adults

> **NIH NIH R21** · RAND CORPORATION · 2020 · $244,526

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 Marijuana laws regarding the sale and possession of recreational marijuana in the U.S. have changed
substantially in the past five years, making the drug more accessible through legal purchase to state residents
aged 21 and older. Yet, as more states consider legalization, an essential policy question still needs to be
addressed: Is a young person more likely to use marijuana if the drug is now more available to them through
legal purchase? Studies that have examined trends in use over time have attempted to answer this question,
but they have failed to account for individual changes in use over time. Moreover, any examination of whether
increased usage can be explained by changes in a state’s legal policies needs to account for increased access
to the drug via availability of stores where one can legally purchase recreational marijuana (i.e., marijuana
outlets). The density of outlets around one’s home and proximity to these outlets need to be taken into
account, as well as whether there are clear signage and advertisements from storefront signs and billboards in
the immediate area that identify the outlet as selling recreational marijuana. We propose a time sensitive and
unique research study that seeks to provide the most compelling data to date to answer the policy question
regarding whether proliferation of recreational marijuana outlets in a large populated area influences young
adult marijuana outcomes such as use, consequences, intentions to use, and beliefs about the drug. We
propose to utilize address and marijuana outcome data from a multi-wave ongoing study with young adults in
Los Angeles County, where one timepoint captures marijuana use from the sample prior to the opening of
recreational outlets (pre-January 1, 2018) and a second timepoint one year later occurs after outlets began
opening in the County for legal purchase (post-January 1, 2018). We plan to utilize an innovative data
collection approach we developed to capture information about locations and signage/advertisements of
licensed and unlicensed recreational marijuana outlets. The marijuana outlet database and the longitudinal
dataset from the larger study will provide an unprecedented opportunity to understand whether the proliferation
of recreational marijuana outlets and signage/ads in young adults’ neighborhoods are related to their increased
marijuana use. In analyses, we control for a number of relevant factors that may also account for increased
marijuana use over time, such as age and demographic factors, density of and proximity to medical marijuana
outlets around one’s home, possession of a provider’s medical marijuana recommendation, prior trajectories of
marijuana use over nine annual timepoints, and personal and neighborhood sociodemographic risk factors that
are associated with use and location of marijuana outlets, such as number of local alcohol outlets and
participant socioeconomic status. Findings can help shape policies as sta...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9850235
- **Project number:** 5R21DA047501-02
- **Recipient organization:** RAND CORPORATION
- **Principal Investigator:** ELIZABETH J. D'AMICO
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $244,526
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-01-15 → 2021-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9850235

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9850235, Associations of Exposure to Marijuana Outlets and Advertising with Marijuana Use Outcomes Among Young Adults (5R21DA047501-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-11 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9850235. Licensed CC0.

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