Marijuana Policy Diffusion In The United States

The diffusion of marijuana policy in the United States is a relatively new area of study in political science. I uncover some of the causes and methods of marijuana diffusion in this thesis by organizing my data from all 50 states in an Event History Analysis to measure what causes a state to increase its likelihood of adoption. Using fiscal health of the state, ideological position in the government and in the citizenry, partisan control of a state, and amount of surrounding state with a pro-marijuana policy, I examine how these variables affect each state’s likelihood to adopt. With a series of Cox Proportional Hazards models, I determine (1) that states generally adopt pro-marijuana policies when they are in a good fiscal situation, (2) more liberal and Democratic states are more likely to adopt a pro-marijuana policy, and (3) recreational and medical marijuana policies spread via regional diffusion.