A new study has emerged that may silence those opponents of legalized marijuana who think it will proliferate crime. Published in the journal PLOS One, the study aimed to see if there was a correlation between medical marijuana, which has been legalized in 21 states including Washington D.C.. Turns out, medical marijuana may be actually correlated with a reduction in crime.
Robert G. Morris, Michael TenEyck, J. C. Barnes and Tomislav V. Kovandzic analyzed FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program data from each of the 50 states between 1990 and 2006. They then compared those statistics to the those of the 11 states – Alaska (1998), California (1996), Colorado (2000), Hawaii (2000), Maine (1999), Montana (2004), Nevada (2000), Oregon (1998), Rhode Island (2006), Vermont (2004), and Washington (1998)– that legalized and enacted medical marijuana during that same time span.
Taking into account a number of variables – including age groups, unemployment, percent of population living below the poverty line, percent of population with at least a bachelor’s degree, and the per capita consumption of beer – the authors of the study examined homicides, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto thefts.
Between 1990 and 2006, crime rates for all of those violations decreased overall though some, like larceny and rape, spiked substantially before reducing.
Similar violent crimes like aggravated assault, homicide and robbery also appear to have been on the rise by the time the study came to a close.
But there’s still the age-old argument that marijuana is the ultimate gateway drug.
“Studies have shown that marijuana use was associated with higher prevalence of subsequent illicit drug use,” wrote the authors in the study. “Yet, other studies have found that once additional factors were controlled for, there was no relationship between marijuana use and later serious drug use.”
Medford, Mass.- based universal drug legalization advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) thinks opponents of legalized marijuana, for both recreational and medical use, have no argument.
“It must be difficult to be an opponent of marijuana reform,” said Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), a police officer for 34 yeas now at the helm of LEAP. “They can’t make arguments against legalization based on logic and facts so they must constantly resort to fear-based hypotheticals and anecdotes that keep getting proved wrong by systematic study. I feel for them. I really do.”
It’s important to realize, too, that LEAP isn’t a proponent of legalizing all drugs just for the sake of doing so. Their contention is that by ending the prohibition of all narcotics, the costly and often regressive war on drugs will come to a close.
“These findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes,” continues the study’s authors. “Our findings indicated that [medical marijuana legalization] precedes a reduction in homicide and assault.”
Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2012 and recently doled out 35 licenses for proprietors to open up dispensaries statewide. Though the licensing process has been called into question with some even crying corruption, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health expects for the dispensaries to be up and running by the end of the summer of 2014.
