New research by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the legalization of marijuana at the federal level would lead to healthier employees and even cheaper workers’ compensation claims for injured workers
In addition, the study showed there would be a decrease in the burden of America’s medical system in terms of cost, logistics, and patient traffic.
The study also points to research that shows that legalizing marijuana at a federal level could lead to as much as a 35% decrease in opioid related overdose deaths.
The study of 500,000 people culled data from those states between 2010-2018 that legalized adult recreational marijuana to see how many people filed workers’ coompensation claims, their age, and if there was a claim, how much the payout was. They also pooled data from as far back as 1990 to see the level of workers’ compensation claims contrast the with the yet to bud (pardon the pun) marijuana industry.
To their surprise, the data showed that workers who had access to recreational marijuana to help ease their pain didn’t rely as heavily on workers’ compensation.
What that meant for the emplyer is that the employee would take less time out of work and away from production. Those employees were taking fewer “sick” days, whether those days were used personally as a way to deal with the physical pain or any mental suffering that was associated with the reason for the worker’s compensation claim.
Of course, that meant less of a need for the injured worker to make doctor’s visits or look to pharmaceutical methods of pain relief, medicines that often come with side effects.
Because of the availibility of recreational marijuana the individual would be outside the purview of his doctor, purchase marijuana for other reasons, and reap the benefits of pain relief, intentionally or unintentionally.
Want specifics numbers? Well, compared to states where recreational marijuna was yet to be made full legal, in those states where it was legal there were 20% fewer workers between 40-62 receiving worker’s compensation which translated into a 20% drop in fanancial payout and a 13% decline in claims.
