Hits from the Bong: The Impact of Recreational Marijuana Dispensaries on Property Values

This paper studies the impact of local disamenities on property values, by focusing on the lega lization of recreational marijuana dispensaries in Washington State. Policymakers have long expressed concerns that the positive effects of the legalization—e.g., increases in tax revenue—are well spread spatially, but the negative effects are highly localized. We use changes in property values to measure individuals’ willingness to pay to avoid the local negative externalities caused by the arrival of marijuana dispensaries. Our key identification strategy is to compare changes in housing sales around winners and losers in a lottery for recreational marijuana retail licenses; due to location restrictions, license applicants were required to provide an address of where they would like to locate. Hence, we have the locations of both actual entrants and potential entrants, which provide a natural difference-in-differences set-up. Based on our preliminary analysis using data from King County, Washington, we find a 1.7% decrease in the value of properties within a 0.5 mile radius of an entrant (or a $6,700 decline in property values). ∗Columbia University, [email protected] †Columbia University, [email protected]