The post Here’s What Happens To Violent Crime When Marijuana Is Legalized appeared first on High Times.
The legalization of cannabis sets off a number of far-reaching ripple effects. It touches everything from public health to local economies to law enforcement policies, and much more. The ripple effects of legal weed also impact violent crime. Here’s what happens to violent crime when marijuana is legalized.
Violent Crime and Legal Weed
The short answer to the question, what happens to violent crime when marijuana is legalized, is simple: it decreases. That decrease happens largely because legal weed disrupts the black market. At the same time, legalization places cannabis into the legal economy. That makes it much easier to track and regulate.
Of course, there are tons of other concerns that weed’s move into the legal economy raises. For example, it’s important that a handful of massive corporations doesn’t immediately monopolize the newly legal weed market. Such a development could potentially turn legal weed into the next Big Pharma.
Similarly, it’s crucial that we keep the legal weed economy from repeating the racial inequities that define the War on Drugs. It’s counterproductive if the legal weed industry ends up profiting only wealthy white business owners while millions of people of color continue dealing with the injustices of prohibition.
With all that said, it does appear that legalization helps decrease violent crime. In fact, this is exactly what a study published in November 2017 found. In this study, researchers reviewed FBI crime reports and homicide records. They looked at records from 1994 through 2012.
Researchers found that legal marijuana coincided with noticeable drops in violent crime. These changes were most pronounced in states bordering Mexico.