Breaking Bad in Bourbon Country: Does Alcohol Prohibition Encourage Methamphetamine Production?

This paper examines the influence of local alcohol prohibition on the prevalence of methamphetamine labs. Using multiple sources of data for counties in Kentucky, we compare various measures of meth manufacturing in wet, moist, and dry counties. Our preferred estimates address the endogeneity of local alcohol policies by using as instrumental variables data on religious affiliations in the 1930s, when most local-option votes took place. Alcohol prohibition status is influenced by the percentage of the population that is Baptist, consistent with the “bootleggers and Baptists” model. Our results suggest that the number of meth lab seizures in Kentucky would decrease by 24.4 percent if all counties became wet.

[1]  J. Pepper,et al.  The Effect of Alcohol Prohibition on Illicit‐Drug‐Related Crimes* , 2005, The Journal of Law and Economics.

[2]  Lon-Mu Liu,et al.  Impacts of federal precursor chemical regulations on methamphetamine arrests. , 2005, Addiction.

[3]  D. Rees,et al.  The minimum legal drinking age and marijuana use: new estimates from the NLSY97. , 2013, Journal of health economics.

[4]  Christopher R. Taber,et al.  Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools , 2000, Journal of Political Economy.

[5]  Barış K. Yörük,et al.  The impact of minimum legal drinking age laws on alcohol consumption, smoking, and marijuana use: evidence from a regression discontinuity design using exact date of birth. , 2011, Journal of health economics.

[6]  Christopher S. Carpenter.  Heavy Alcohol Use and the Commission of Nuisance Crime: Evidence from Underage Drunk Driving Laws , 2005 .

[7]  Jennifer Cook Middleton,et al.  The effectiveness of limiting alcohol outlet density as a means of reducing excessive alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms. , 2009, American journal of preventive medicine.

[8]  Jeffrey Zwiebel,et al.  The Economic Case against Drug Prohibition , 1995 .

[9]  B. Marshall,et al.  Health outcomes associated with methamphetamine use among young people: a systematic review. , 2010, Addiction.

[10]  N. Nicosia,et al.  Are supply-side drug control efforts effective? Evaluating OTC regulations targeting methamphetamine precursors , 2014 .

[11]  N. Nicosia,et al.  The War on Drugs: Methamphetamine, Public Health, and Crime. , 2009, The American economic review.

[12]  Kathryn I. Cunningham,et al.  Proximity to the US-Mexico border: a key to explaining geographic variation in US methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin purity. , 2010, Addiction.

[13]  Steven D. Levitt,et al.  Why Do Increased Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Crime: Deterrence, Incapacitation, or Measurement Error? , 1995 .

[14]  Monica Deza,et al.  The Effects of Alcohol on the Consumption of Hard Drugs: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997 , 2015, Health economics.

[15]  E. Toma.  STATE LIQUOR LICENSING, IMPLICIT CONTRACTING, AND DRY/WET COUNTIES , 1988 .

[16]  R. Pacula.  Does increasing the beer tax reduce marijuana consumption? , 1998, Journal of health economics.

[17]  Benjamin Crost,et al.  The effect of alcohol availability on marijuana use: evidence from the minimum legal drinking age. , 2012, Journal of health economics.

[18]  R Baughman,et al.  Slippery when wet: the effects of local alcohol access laws on highway safety. , 2001, Journal of health economics.

[19]  J. Whitley,et al.  Measurement Error in County-Level UCR Data , 2003 .

[20]  R. Weisheit,et al.  Methamphetamine Laboratories: The Geography of Drug Production , 2008 .

[21]  E. Oster,et al.  Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Validation , 2013 .

[22]  Christopher R. Taber,et al.  An Evaluation of Instrumental Variable Strategies for Estimating the Effects of Catholic Schooling , 2002, The Journal of Human Resources.

[23]  John V. Pepper,et al.  Measurement Error in Criminal Justice Data , 2010 .

[24]  Felix Oberholzer-Gee,et al.  Endogenous Policy Decentralization: Testing the Central Tenet of Economic Federalism , 1999, Journal of Political Economy.

[25]  R. Rawson,et al.  The methamphetamine problem in the United States. , 2010, Annual review of public health.

[26]  Christopher S. Carpenter,et al.  The Drinking Age , Alcohol Consumption , and Crime , 2008 .

[27]  Lon-Mu Liu,et al.  Impacts of federal ephedrine and pseudoephedrine regulations on methamphetamine-related hospital admissions. , 2003, Addiction.

[28]  J. Dinardo,et al.  Alcohol, marijuana, and American youth: the unintended consequences of government regulation. , 2001, Journal of health economics.