Workers in states with medical cannabis laws were less likely to miss work for health-related reasons. That’s according to a new study that examined more than three decades of federal labor data and found the strongest reductions in physically demanding jobs.
The study, published in the Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health, found that medical cannabis decriminalization was associated with about a 6.9% decline in the likelihood that workers reported missing work because of illness, injury or another medical issue. The researchers found no statistically significant effect from recreational cannabis laws on health-related workplace absenteeism.
“What we found was that for medical marijuana, yes, there was an effect,” said Patryk Babiarz, a University of Georgia researcher and corresponding author of the study, in an interview with Straight Arrow. “It’s about 7% reduction in the probability of missing work, specifically for medical or health-related reasons after legalization.”
Babiarz said the study found larger reductions among workers in jobs involving physical labor, including fabricators, assemblers and other manual laborers, machine operators, farm workers, health service workers and construction workers.
“This absentee-reducing effect is actually much more pronounced in those types of occupations and in those types of industries where people do a lot of manual or physical labor,” Babiarz said. He said the findings suggest medical cannabis may be used by some workers as a therapy for pain-related conditions, though the study did not directly measure individual cannabis use or medical diagnoses.
Researchers studied 35 years worth of data
The authors analyzed monthly Current Population Survey data covering January 1990 through March 2025. The survey, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, asks respondents about employment and labor market activity, including whether they recently missed work because of illness, injury or other medical reasons. The final sample included more than 20 million workers ages 18 to 61.
The researchers compared changes in health-related absences before and after states enacted medical and recreational cannabis policies, accounting for demographic factors, state economic conditions and time trends. They measured legalization using both decriminalization dates and the start of regulated sales, finding the medical cannabis effect was clearer when tied to decriminalization.
The findings come as employers and safety professionals continue to navigate a changing legal landscape. Many states now permit medical cannabis, while federal law and workplace policies still create restrictions. Safety advocates have warned that employers must balance accommodations for medical conditions with obligations to address impairment and safety-sensitive work.
Author said study offers pros and cons of legalization
Babiarz said the study should not be read as an endorsement of cannabis legalization. “I don’t want to advocate for policy of legalizing marijuana because that was actually never our intention,” he said. “If anything, it’s just supposed to inform the policymaking and make the policymakers a little bit more aware of both pros and cons.”
He also noted the study was narrow in scope, focused only on health-related workplace absences. The paper’s limitations say the data do not show whether respondents used cannabis, what health conditions they may have had or how long any absences lasted.
“It’s the totality of all of those effects that should be considered when legislatures and the states decide whether they want to legalize or not,” Babiarz said.
