Effects of state education requirements for substance use prevention.

We provide the first evidence on the effects of state laws requiring students to receive education about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs using data on over a million youths from the 1976-2010 Monitoring the Future study. In difference-in-differences and event-study models, we find robust evidence that these laws significantly reduced recent alcohol and marijuana use among high school seniors by 1.6-2.8 percentage points, or about 8-10% of the overall decline over this period. Our results suggest that information interventions can reduce youth substance use.