Changing state policies to become more liberal will save hundreds of thousands of lives while shifting to conservative policies will cost them, a study published Wednesday in PLOS ONE finds.
to look at the link between policy and an unexpected increase in deaths among working-age Americans. Compared to European countries and other Western peers, the rise in deaths among this population in the U.S. has been “alarming,” Jennifer Karas Montez, a sociology researcher at Syracuse University and the first author of the new research, told The Daily Beast.
“We often don't talk about economic policies as if they’re health policies, but the reality is they are,” she said. Of the policies studied, only more liberal marijuana policies were associated with a decrease in life expectancy. Even so, other studies on the overall health effects of marijuana policies have been inconclusive, identifying benefits such as treatment for chronic pain but an increasedWe often don’t talk about economic policies as if they’re health policies, but the reality is they are.