The Louisville researchers noticed that dry counties had higher rates of meth lab busts, as well as higher rates of meth crimes overall. And the effect is significant: "if all counties were to become wet, the total number of meth lab seizures in Kentucky would decline by about 25 percent," they found
LEGALIZE WEED, MAN TL;DR legalizing pot shows a statistically significant drop in pain medicine abuse. 25% fewer OD deaths due to pain killers in Colorado. Prohibition only feeds crime and gangs and the mortician.
Here's the punchline The Bradfords hypothesize that the short duration of the glaucoma relief provided by marijuana — roughly an hour or so — may actually stimulate more demand in traditional glaucoma medications. Glaucoma patients may experience some short-term relief from marijuana, which may prompt them to seek other, robust treatment options from their doctors.One interesting wrinkle in the data is glaucoma, for which there was a small increase in demand for traditional drugs in medical-marijuana states. It's routinely listed as an approved condition under medical-marijuana laws, and studies have shown that marijuana provides some degree of temporary relief for its symptoms.
I have been reading about the drop in a broad class of perscription medications in places that have legalized weed and it seems great. Personally I've found that weed does absolutely nothing to dull pain and usually makes it worse. Not that I expect that my reaction is common but I just don't care for it as a pain med. I hardly smoke anymore and when I do I mostly use it as a medicinal sleep aid.
Hmm. The link doesn't seem to work. Do you have an alternate? I'm not a sociologist or anything, but from what I understand about dry counties, is they tend to be in more rural areas, where poverty tends to be an issue. So it's not surprising meth tends to be a problem in dry counties. Meth is some pretty scary shit and the just as scary heroin seems to be picking up steam again too. Edit: Here's a map of Kentucky with county breakdown for alcohol laws. It's about five years old, but it still paints a pretty good picture.