We provide the first evidence on the effects of state laws requiring students to receive education about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs using data on over a million youths from the 1976-2010 Monitoring the Future study. In difference-in-differences and event-study models, we find robust evidence that these laws significantly reduced recent alcohol and marijuana use among high school seniors by 1.6-2.8 percentage points, or about 8-10% of the overall decline over this period. Our results suggest that information interventions can reduce youth substance use.
Keywords: education; quasi-experiment; substance use.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.