By Jessica Peralta
Crime is frequently cited as a reason not to legalize cannabis, but a February study from researchers at the University of Bologna’s Department of Economics in Italy, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, concluded that the fears of a jump in crime from legalizing recreational cannabis use are unjustified.
In fact, researchers found a possible decrease.
“One clear benefit of legalized marijuana is that it hinders the black market, as marijuana can be bought ‘out in the open’ in a legal and regulated business,” said Marc Ross, a securities attorney with Sichenzia Ross Ference Kesner in New York, who also teaches business and law of marijuana at Hofstra University School of Law, the such course taught in a US law school. “And, as the influence of gangs and cartels decrease in society, one would expect the amount of ‘serious crimes,’ which are usually associated with gangs and cartels, to decrease as well.”
Researchers took what they referred to as a “quasi-experiment” – the legalization of recreational cannabis in the adjacent states of Washington and Oregon two years apart (Washington in 2012 and Oregon in 2014) – to study the effects legalization had on crime.
They found that reported rapes dropped in Washington between 15 percent and 30 percent, while reports of property crimes fell by between 10 and 20 percent, and reports of thefts decreased between 13 percent and 22 percent.
Jeffrey D. Swartz, a former prosecutor, defense attorney and judge, and now a professor of criminal procedure and criminal law at the Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in the capital, Lansing, said the study lines up with his knowledge of cannabis and criminal activity.
“There is a great deal of violence that surrounds the trafficking of drugs, including marijuana,” said Swartz. “Legalization will remove the profits that makes trafficking in marijuana worth the risk, and worth the violence that competing drug operations spawn. Decriminalization will reduce the kind of crime that manifests in the competition between rival factions in the illegal trade.”
Though the study itself could not definitively give the reasons behind the decrease, the researchers did note some possibilities, including the notions that legalization could lead to a reduction in the criminal element involved in cannabis, as well as cannabis itself being a relaxation-inducing, and perhaps violence-reducing, drug.
The researchers pointed out in their own results that the legalization of recreational cannabis increased its consumption while reducing the consumption of other substances, such as alcohol – which may be more violence-inducing. Another possibility suggested by the researchers is that legalization could bring a reallocation of law enforcement resources away from cannabis.
Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Jonathan Mandel, who takes on a number of cannabis-related cases, said he hasn’t anecdotally noticed a drop in crime himself since California legalized recreational marijuana use in 2018, but he does sense a shift among prosecutors.
“It allows them to focus on serious stuff,” he said.
He does question the ability to generalize the study to areas outside of the Northwest, however.
“I don’t know how that would play in the Midwest or South,” he said. “I don’t know whether their attitude towards marijuana is the same.”
