Employment and Disability Among Canadian Medical Cannabis Patients

Do patients increase or decrease their employment after starting prescription medical cannabis? I exploit a novel panel database of more than 4,000 medical cannabis patients to analyze connections between medical cannabis treatment and changes in employment and disability status, finding a mild increase in employment and small reductions in unemployment and labor force participation. Patients taking antiepileptic medications at the time of cannabis prescription do significantly better than average, whereas patients taking nerve modulators do somewhat worse. Other factors such as age, sex, prior use of cannabis, or characteristics of prescription cannabis do not strongly correlate with labor market changes