Understanding the Dynamics between Vaping and Cannabis Legalization Using Twitter Opinions

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter opinions to assess how cannabis legalization influences e-cigarette users' attitudes, revealing that legalization correlates with increased pro-cannabis sentiments among e-cigarette enthusiasts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel observational approach combining weakly supervised learning and stance detection to study social media opinions on cannabis and vaping.

Findings

Cannabis legalization increases pro-cannabis attitudes among e-cigarette users.

Twitter data reveals shifts in public opinion post-legalization.

Weakly supervised learning effectively classifies stance in social media posts.

Abstract

Cannabis legalization has been welcomed by many U.S. states but its role in escalation from tobacco e-cigarette use to cannabis vaping is unclear. Meanwhile, cannabis vaping has been associated with new lung diseases and rising adolescent use. To understand the impact of cannabis legalization on escalation, we design an observational study to estimate the causal effect of recreational cannabis legalization on the development of pro-cannabis attitude for e-cigarette users. We collect and analyze Twitter data which contains opinions about cannabis and JUUL, a very popular e-cigarette brand. We use weakly supervised learning for personal tweet filtering and classification for stance detection. We discover that recreational cannabis legalization policy has an effect on increased development of pro-cannabis attitudes for users already in favor of e-cigarettes.