Are there any statistics or studies on this from the states that have legalized marijuana? I have often heard this as an argument in favor of legalization, that it reduces violent crime by bringing marijuana out of the black market. Are there any numbers on this? I am most interested in the effect on murder rates.
Here’s an article in regards to the legalization in Colorado and violent crime.
Here is a one year status report for Washington and Colorado: Marijuana Legalization in Washington State: One-Year Status Report
In general, the answer is yes. There is a reduction in violent crime correlated to the legalization of marijuana.
Here’s an article from the Denver Post claiming just the opposite.
Paywalled.
If it’s the same story, Snopes says unproven.
Sorry about the paywall. I didn’t have to pay to view it. Anyhow you are right, the association is tenuous.
However, one point. Oakland has legalized cannabis and I live in a warehouse that has grow-ops next door. The grow places have been robbed multiple times, and we residents have encountered an uptick of transients inside our gated parking lot. We don’t know if they’re street people or temporary seasonal employees sleeping in their cars. Either way they got no manners and while they aren’t committing any crimes, any sort of aggressive person who accosts me on the premises of the place where I legally reside, after dark especially, is a quality of life issue that IMO invites criminal behavior to follow.
Are the grow-ops legal? if they’re not, report 'em.
You can’t blame legalized marijuana for continued illegal operations and the attendant crime.
Actually, cannabis is still quasi-legal status as a cash crop. A lot of monetary transactions, such as purchases inside a dispensary, cannot be made via credit card because it crosses state lines. It is harder for cannabis businesses to find banks.
IMO some of the would-be cannabis investors now flooding into Oakland have not considered that legalization means a 30% sales tax, plus price drops on bulk product.
None of that is directly related to the point of this thread, the connection between cannabis legalization and changes in crime levels. I would like to think that there are well-run, ethical cannabis businesses out there and I hope they are the ones that succeed.
Do you have evidenced of an increase in the incidence of such people in the general population? Or could it be merely a redistribution of a certain demographic according the geographical presence of economic activity of interest to them?
Cecil’s column, and the many threads its spawned make me wish I remembered a particular news story I read a few years ago, basically it was considering the benefits of pot legalization in Seattle, meant to generate millions in tax revenue for municipalities that have budgets in the billions.
I could probably Google news for the reference, but my problem understanding the dilemma remains – if legalization adds 1/1000th of the revenue, how does it actually help a problem? Of course, if that shortfall is true, then how does any revenue meet any financial need?
Understanding this dilemma has 3 problems for me:
1). I’m not a pot smoker, and I don’t have a vested interest in legalizing pot. And as a distinct “square” – the bubbly praise for pot, its production, its legalization and how awesome it is to that particular poster’s life leaves me cold and disinterested. You’re not selling me on the concept with your anecdotes, is what I’m saying.
2). It used to be that the meme was that hemp was supremely valuable as a fiber crop, until “da mahn” made it uncool. Cecil had a column that specifically addressed this, hemp is dubious at best as a fiber source, and certainly there are other less exploited plant sources for fiber – you just can’t get stoned off them. People have mostly abandoned this tack. But they used to defend it as vigorously as the new “legal pot as revenue” meme. Does that make the “legal pot as revenue” meme just as dubious?
3). And again, I’d like to see the cost vs benefit in real dollars … yes, now defending grow areas and dealing with grow area transients are now new costs you have to add to the cost benefit analysis.
Washington State expects to collect $730MM in taxes related to legal marijuana over the next biennium. Our budget over that period is $43.7B. So marijuana is funding 1.6% of that, which may not sound like much, but is a lot more than 1/1000. I couldn’t find a similar projection for alcohol taxes, but for FY2017, alcohol taxes brought in 13% more revenue than marijuana taxes ($355MM vs $314MM), so around the same rough impact on the budget.
Until they can bank their reciepts, I dont think we will see a big reduction in crime.
Welcome to Canada. 
Medical cannabis is fully legal here, if you have the required permits, needed both to produce and to consume it (getting these permits is apparently a daunting process).
There have been a number of reports on the CBC about the ‘cannabis boom’: corporations jockeying to get into position as national recreational legalization looms in summer 2018. Here’s an example:
Meet Canada’s Marijuana Moguls
So hopefully we’ll see some revenue and some data about crime rates in a couple of years.
I think full legalization could result in more violent fights over the last oreo or slice of pizza. That’s what I recall from the mid 70s.
Assuming there are the same number of people as before, and people don’t change their proclivities overnight, redistribution seems more likely.