Cannabis Control and Crime: Medicinal Use, Depenalization and the War on Drugs

Abstract

To date, 27 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws easing marijuana control. This paper examines the relationship between the legalization of medical marijuana, depenalization of possession, and the incidence of non-drug crime. Using state panel data from 1970 to 2012, results show evidence of 4–12 % reductions in robberies, larcenies, and burglaries due to the legalization of medical marijuana, but that depenalization has little effect and may instead increase crime rates. These effects are supported by null results for crimes unrelated to the cannabis market and are consistent with the supply-side effects of medicinal use that are absent from depenalization laws as well as existing evidence on the substitution between marijuana and alcohol. The findings contribute new evidence to the complex debate surrounding marijuana policy and the war on drugs.

Guidelines for public health and safety metrics to evaluate the potential harms and benefits of cannabis regulation in Canada

“…Several studies explored the impact of state medical cannabis legalisation on violent and property crime [24][25][26][27] with one noting significant reductions [25]. Other studies report reductions in subsets of the data; for example, Chu and Townsend [27] noted that California experienced a significant reduction (by 20%), Morris et al [26] observed a slight but significant reduction in state homicides, and Gavrilova et al [24] detected significantly reduced crime in states bordering Mexico.…”

“…Mixed findings for retail sales sites, with some evidence of a reduction in violent crime [29] and other evidence of no significant impact [30] in Denver, Colorado. Medical cannabis legalisation: State medical cannabis laws associated with significant reductions [25] or no change [24,26,27]. Evidence of reductions in states bordering Mexico [24,27], and some evidence of reduction in homicide rate [26].…”

The Criminal Justice System and More Lenient Drug Policy: Three Case Studies on California's Changes to How Its Criminal Justice System Addresses Drug Use

“…By transitioning marijuana transactions from illegitimate exchanges that had to be actively enforced to legitimate transactions, there is an immediate reduction in the burden of enforcement assuming the legal market replaces the black market (Miron & Zwiebel, 1995;Edward M Shepard & Blackley, 2005). Law enforcement and the Courts may then transition resources to other, arguably more violent, types of crimes (Huber, Newman, & LaFave, 2016;Miron & Zwiebel, 1995). Second, there is the potential for liberalization laws to influence crime rates through an increase in marijuana (mis)use (e.g.…”

“…The enactment of state laws since 1996 provide an opportunity to empirically test the effect of regulated markets on outcomes of interest. Studies have evaluated outcomes such as marijuana use (Chu, 2014;Harper, Strumpf, & Kaufman, 2012;Deborah S. Hasin et al, 2015;Lynne-Landsman, Livingston, & Wagenaar, 2013;Pacula, Powell, Heaton, & Sevigny, 2015;Wall et al, 2011;Wen, Hockenberry, & Cummings, 2015), crime rates (Chu & Townsend, 2017;Gavrilova, Kamada, & Zoutman, 2017;Huber et al, 2016;Morris, TenEyck, Barnes, & Kovandzic, 2014;Edward M. Shepard & Blackley, 2016), and other health outcomes (D. M. Anderson, Rees, & Sabia, 2014;Chu, 2015;Smart, 2015). These studies all use a difference-in-difference methodology where the treatment is a change in a state law that loosens restrictions on the sale of marijuana.…”

“…Moreover, by focusing on local variation within a single state with a long experience with the policy, we are able to implicitly control for changing state norms and marijuana use that could be independently associated with marijuana-involved crime. Other state-level factors that could bias estimates of crime rates across states, such as depenalization of marijuana, are also implicitly controlled in our analysis (Huber et al, 2016). This analysis can help inform policies at the local level, where regulation is usually enacted, that better balance safety and access to medical marijuana.…”