The Impact of Recreational Marijuana Legalization on Simple Assault in Oregon

Abstract

There has been heightened public concern about the implications of recreational marijuana legalization to public safety. Prior research on this issue has primarily focused on Colorado and Washington State—the two states that first legalized recreational marijuana in the U.S.—and on legalization’s impact on major crimes. This study extends this line of research to Oregon (OR, legalized in late 2014) and examines the impact of legalization on a less serious form of violent crime—simple assault. Using Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data from 2007 to 2017 and a quasi-experimental research design, this study found that counties in OR have experienced increases in simple assault rate following legalization, relative to rates in the 19 non-legalized states. Findings suggest the need for more scholarly efforts to explore the potential impact of marijuana legalization on different subtypes of violent crime in other legalized states.

Impact of Recreational Cannabis Legalization on Adolescent Cannabis Use in Washington State

“…We also included state-level characteristics such as state median household income, unemployment rate, percentage of men, and percentage of whites in the models as covariates, given previous research suggests they are indicators of social and economic conditions that may affect illicit drug use and criminal behavior (Mauro et al, 2019; Wen et al, 2019; Wu et al, 2020; Wu & Willits, 2022). Specifically, data for median household income were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates from 2005 to 2019, and data for unemployment rate, percentage of men , and percentage of Whites were acquired from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (under the Department of Labor)’s Local Area Unemployment Statistics.…”

Legalize It, Criticize It, or Something Else? Americans’ Attitudes Toward Federal Recreational Marijuana Legislation (RML)

“…Some work suggests an association. To illustrate, one recent evaluation detected significant increases in simple assaults after the passage of RML in Oregon (Wu & Willits, 2022; see also, Connealy et al, 2020; Freisthler et al, 2017). Notably, however, many of the studies reporting a legalization-crime relationship have been critiqued.…”

Dazed and Confused: Difficulties for Law Enforcement During Oregon’s Transition to a Legal Marijuana Market

“…The few studies currently available on this topic generate contradictory findings. This includes studies finding increased crime (Matthay et al, 2021; Wu et al, 2021; Wu & Willits, 2022), decreased crime (Dragone et al, 2019), or no impact from legalization of recreational marijuana at the state level (Lu et al, 2021). Other researchers have assessed changes at a more localized unit of analysis, including four studies conducted in Denver, Colorado.…”