Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

http://mic.com/articles/92449/six-months-after-legalizing-marijuana-two-big-things-have-happened-in-colorado

by ca98am79 • 12 years ago

188 93 12 years ago

mic.com

kenjackson• 12 years ago

Curious, have we seen similar data in Washington/Seattle -- another place where it was legalized?

big_youth• 12 years ago

Washington has not opened it's first shops yet, the official start date is July 8th.

larrykubin• 12 years ago

Here in Seattle, things are moving slowly. The first stores haven't even opened up yet.

ozten• 12 years ago

Yep. The first store is scheduled to open next Tuesday http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023970923_potlicense...

binarymax• 12 years ago

The second point seems like it is a stretch. Of course, crime rate of illegal marijuana dropped when it was legalized.

What I'd really like to see if related crime has dropped or increased - such as DUI, Theft, Assault, etc.

--Edit-- Thanks all for pointing out the piece I skimmed over :) ...However I am still very curious to smaller offenses and misdemeanors. It will be years before we see good statistics, but those elements will be politically crucial in pushing for wider adoption.

steveklabnik2• 12 years ago

    > According to government data, the Denver city- and
    > county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational
    > marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared
    > to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1
    > through April 30.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

Their math is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977655

pavanky• 12 years ago

According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30.

This was the second paragraph of the crime section.

mertd• 12 years ago

Click through the link provided to see the raw data. Murder figure looks a little cherry picked. It went from 17 to 9. It was a very cold winter on top of that. Temperature is highly corralled with crime.

mlevy• 12 years ago

According to the Denver city data, there were 19 murders in the Denver city area through May last year, and 11 this year. That's better, but implying that to be a statistically significant phenomenon related to marijuana legalization seems intellectually dishonest. Especially when the overall crime numbers for more common crimes don't seem to show any consistent patterns.

http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20...

jws3• 12 years ago

That statistic is cherry picked from a list of 36 at http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... and has a relatively low sample size.

If you can't find a statistic to cherry pick for your argument in a list of 36 you have a very bad argument.

• Arson has doubled since legalization! Bunch of flaming stoners.

• Embezzlement is down 88%! Who knew this was all society needed to fortify people's fiduciary responsibilities.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

I wonder how much of that was due to the weather?

How much more severe was this winter compared to last year?

lotsofmangos3• 12 years ago

The second point included this:

According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30.

otoburb• 12 years ago

On the one hand, it was a stretch to frame the benefit as a "drop in crime". On the other hand, the secondary benefits flowing from the drop were worth touting, namely the first-order cost and time savings of processing arrests, running through the court system and incarceration.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20...

Crimes against persons: up about 24%

Crimes against property: down about 10%

Crimes against society: up about 23% which includes narcotics crimes up by 21%

All other crimes: up over 150%

No one should be trying to read data out of this noise, but if you are, it's not looking good for any legalization argument.

jws3• 12 years ago

Over half of the overall increase comes from a huge increase in "Disorderly Conduct/Disturbing the Peace" (> 6x), and "Criminal Trespass" (> 3x).

Those two categories plus a similar growth buried in "All Other Offenses" accounts for essentially all of the growth in reported crimes.

There is probably a story there somewhere.

TallGuyShort• 12 years ago

> Of course, crime rate of illegal marijuana dropped when it was legalized.

I think this is a more important point than either you or the author realize. Yes it seems obvious, but was it worth calling marijuana users criminals in the first place? If you stop arresting all these people, and negative side effects don't increase, why were they getting arrested to begin with? Getting arrested is a huge deal and impacts your future job prospects, not to mention the short term aspects of possibly being jailed, etc. If that all happens before legalization, but not after legalization, can we really justify the seemingly arbitrary consequences in these people's lives? All other things being equal, getting a bunch of people arrested and calling them criminals is not necessarily better than leaving them be and calling them normal.

xienze4• 12 years ago

According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January.

I think it's probably a stretch to link these two things together...

Also, it sounds like the government is already writing checks based on "predicted" income levels 4x what they are today.

I think legalization is a good idea but I wish people would give things a couple years before drawing meaningful conclusions from the data.

rwl• 12 years ago

This sounds like a great outcome, and I support legalization for basically these reasons. More revenue for state governments, less violence, less law-enforcement time wasted on drug offences, and less crowding of prisons with non-violent drug offenders are all good things.

But surely there have been downsides, too, even if they're not the ones that fear-mongerers predicted. Can anyone in Colorado speak to what those are?

tolas3• 12 years ago

It's hard to decide which dispensary to go to?

But seriously, I live and work in Downtown Denver and have seen no change for the worse, and frankly haven't heard any evidence that any of the assumed negative effects (ie: increase usage among teens and youth) have happened. Denver is one happy (and healthy) city.

Legalization is a no brainer that is simply being held up nationwide due to outdated moral inertia.

akmiller2• 12 years ago

I'm not in Colorado but I saw one of the downsides the other day which is the manufacture of items like candy bars with multiple serving sizes of THC in the one bar. People aren't paying much attention to the serving sizes and there appears to be no restrictions in place yet on how much can be in a given food item. I'm in favor of legalization but there may need to be some more restrictions in place on how much THC could be included in any one item.

tolas3• 12 years ago

This is true. It takes responsibility on the users part and possibly more education on the sellers part. But certainly the same is true with alcohol, caffeine, etc. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/01/caf...

derwiki2• 12 years ago

But on the plus side, you can't overdose on THC (like alcohol, cocaine, heroin, etc). I will note that you can still do stupid things that endanger your life.

chenelson5• 12 years ago

People, especially those in their early 20s, tend to not pay attention to the serving size for alcohol, sometimes to the point of death. Those drinking for the first time often experience a hangover.

People, especially those of retirement age, tend to ignore the serving size for aspirin, to the point of 30k deaths per year.

THC is still rolling with a zero body count.

The patriarchy cannot save us from our own ignorance.

blocktuw• 12 years ago

I've been following all the legalization news closely since I live in Denver. The FUD from opponents of legalization are that it will negatively affect children since access will increase. The 'hey mister' won't be only for alcohol anymore but for cannabis too. Many edible products seem to be targeting children with products like gummy bears, hard candies, brownies, sodas, etc. This would increase the likelihood of accidental ingestion but also seems to be purposefully targeting children's interests similar to cigarette cartoon advertising. The issues around advertising, specific products, and increased access for children most likely will be an ongoing problem that will require additional legislation to resolve.

Second there is a big fear of increased DUI. The framework for legalization required that there be a penalty for DUI, which has been pegged at 5 nanograms of THC per millimeter of blood. This has its own problem, primarily that somebody who is no longer under the influence can still test positive if they are a heavy user. Officers need better tools at their disposal to determine if a driver is actually a danger while driving. This seems no different than legal pills that people also drive while under the influence. This might be a technology problem since there is no way to tell if a person is under the influence of cannabis.

The third big fear is that organized criminal elements will be attracted to the legal market in an attempt to launder their black market sales. There was a big bust of legal grows and dispensaries earlier this year which was supposedly related to cartel sales out of Miami. This seems like the real reason the DEA should be involved in cannabis legalization. So they can determine who is playing by the rules and who is trying to subvert them.

Without much quantitative data, the qualitative affects of legalization seem to have a positive impact on people's lives and the general communities around Denver in my personal opinion.

Nursie2• 12 years ago

I do wonder what people think is going to happen to children who accidentally ingest the stuff. AFAICT there's not a lot of danger compared to alcohol.

I absolutely am not suggesting kids should be allowed pot, just that I think the hysteria is overstated.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

The linked data shows 19 murders in the first five months of 2013, 11 murders in the same period in 2014.

First, this is very noisy data to make any predictions from. (I guess it's a good thing to have so few murders that it's hard to make generalizations.) March 2014 alone had 5 murders compared to three last year.

Second, this isn't a 52.9% drop, even if you exclude May, which makes the drop from 17 to 9. It's a 47.1% drop.

This is a very low quality article.

xyzzy123• 12 years ago

Agreed. I'm pro decriminalization and/or legalization, but a 52% drop in the murder rate due to the legalization of marijuana doesn't even pass the laugh test let alone the kind of analysis people are proposing here.

DatBear3• 12 years ago

They just worded it wrong, really... It should say it's 52.9% of what it was in 2013, meaning it is a 47.1% drop.

But linking to data for 5 months and then only using the 4 you want to use to skew numbers seems pretty ridiculous to me.

And then in the same page there's data for drug/narcotics violations which isn't even mentioned because it is going up (21% more) even though there are supposedly plummeting marijuana convictions. Also they stated that the crime rate in Denver is going down, yet the data shows the exact opposite.

Whole article seems like cherrypicking at its finest.

danielweber5• 12 years ago

It's just the first thing I honed in on when I was checking the article. I could start talking about significant digits but I don't think it's necessary to really put more work into this.

adamors• 12 years ago

Reminds me of this xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/925/

captainarab• 12 years ago

Disturbing the peace is up over 1000% YoY for all months except May.

jessaustin5• 12 years ago

The last refuge of scoundrel police, "disturbing the peace" and "disorderly conduct". Who cares?

tootie• 12 years ago

The notion that decriminalization has caused a drop in murders is specious, anyone claiming that it was cause a spike in serious crime was clearly wrong which is the point he is making. He clearly disclaims that this isn't proof of a long-term correlation.

steveklabnik2• 12 years ago

I think that this _may_ miss the point, though I do appreciate the accuracy.

One of the arguments against legalization is that once marijuana is legal, we would see a significant _increase_ in crime.[1] So a __statistically__ insignificant result is not a __politically__ insignificant result.

1: From TFA: ""Expect more crime, more kids using marijuana and pot for sale everywhere," said Douglas County Sheriff David Weaver in 2012."

transfire• 12 years ago

I worry about what will happen when the next GOP President takes office. Will there be a sudden federal crackdown? If that happens then I think it is inevitable that the US will devolve into a tyranny --just as Plato said, all democracies ultimately do.

tolas3• 12 years ago

I think it's pretty easy to argue that this is a states rights issue and should be left to the states. Nothing they could do would stop the momentum that we have in Colorado.

Not to mention that'd you'd be putting tens of thousands of people out of a job if you tried to "crack down" on one of the fastest growing industries in the country (where it's legal). Job creators.

jack-r-abbit• 12 years ago

It is also pretty easy to argue that the feds need to just make it legal and then let the states go from there. Just like with alcohol where various states have slightly different rules but, for the most part, you can get booze just about where ever and when ever you want.

derwiki2• 12 years ago

Could a new GOP president retroactively charge dispensary customers with illegal possession?

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

It wouldn't be "retroactively" any more than all criminal prosecutions (which, in the absence of precrime legislation, necessarily address events in the past) are.

Subject to the applicable statutes of limitations, as long as the federal laws are on the books, yes, people who committed offenses at a time when the those offenses were not prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch could be charged when the prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch change. That's sort of the key distinction between "prosecutorial priorities" and "laws".

bmelton• 12 years ago

Well, they wouldn't have to retroactively do anything, since marijuana is still a federally controlled substance, and federal law still considers its sale and consumption illegal.

The only thing that stopped the dispensary raids on California dispensaries was discretion. The law hasn't changed substantially enough that what they're doing is still considered kosher to the federal government.

As it stands, the next president, whatever his party, could simply decide to resume those raids, and would be perfectly within their statutory purview to do.

That said, I agree with the assertion that it is a states' rights issue, but SCOTUS precedent extends the power of the Interstate Commerce Clause to include much more than this, so according to current precedent, states rights only exist where the federal government expressly abdicates making a policy decision, which isn't something our federal government is terribly good at doing.

xienze4• 12 years ago

I worry about what will happen when the next GOP President takes office.

Probably a repeat of how Obama handled things.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/obama-marijuana-rai...

jessaustin5• 12 years ago

Since the next GOP prez will be Rand Paul, I wouldn't worry about it. "He's cool, bro."

chipgap98• 12 years ago

This November, it's all but certain that D.C. will vote on a marijuana ballot measure and even pass it, setting up a battle with Congress to legalize.

It will be interesting to see what happens with this vote. The marijuana debate is in a completely different place than it was 16 years ago when Congress blocked the counting of the votes for medical marijuana in D.C., but I could still see them interfering with the vote again.

r00fus• 12 years ago

Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation?

bladegash• 12 years ago

Yep.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation?

Yes, all DC Council legislation is subject to Congressional review before it becomes law. (Government of the capital district is a Congressional power under Article I of the Constitution.)

Throwaway1224• 12 years ago

the graff with the addiction rate vs. drug control spending is misleading. while the addiction rate is constant, the population is growing, meaning the total number of addicted people would be rising.

graff graff.

k__• 12 years ago

I thought the problem with drugs isn't the addiction but the black market.

The people get addicted anyway, but now the money needed to cure them goes where it can help and not to the mob.

jessaustin5• 12 years ago

I suspect it will be like the lottery money that was supposedly destined for the public schools, and it will just turn into a slush fund the legislature and governor can spend as they please.

DatBear3• 12 years ago

The total number of non-addicted people is also rising, by that logic, which is why % is in there...

kteofanidis• 12 years ago

It is misleading only in that the spending should have been per capita. I don't think that changes the point though which is that however much you spend it is just money wasted. As far as I am concerned money shouldn't be thrown away when the approach obviously isn't working no matter how much you think the goal is worth it. For the record I don't agree that the government should ban substances outright, just make sure they are labeled properly for the harm they do.

martin1b• 12 years ago

It's a long stretch to argue a decline in crime is attributed to drug use. Spin the numbers however you wish, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out the truth... If I were in law enforcement, I'd feel pretty slighted that drug users figured out how to take credit for some of my work.

gknoy• 12 years ago

Perhaps it's more related than you think: If pot is legal, police can spend their valuable time policing other things, and making a difference in those areas.

jessaustin5• 12 years ago

The next time the police reduce broadly-based crime rates will be the first time. Demographics and environmental effects control this.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

There was a pretty informative round table on cannabis business hosted on Jason Calacanis' This Week in Startups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zZ8RgfTFzA&feature=youtu.be...

One useful quote from there is not to get euphoric over revenue figures - first few months "people are not buying marijuana, people are buying freedom". A variety of things, such as novelty effect, natural curiosity and even social currency accumulation (people who live in Colorado/Washington brag to their friends outside of those states) motivate the first purchases, you have to look at longer timeline to properly extrapolate the expected sales.

chenelson5• 12 years ago

People aren't purchasing freedom, they're purchasing convenience. And this isn't a new product. Also, as prices fall in the legal retail trade, shouldn't we expect more competition with the black market?

narrowrail• 12 years ago

Currently, in CO, the legal retail prices are > than the black market was in the '90s. The black market is 50% of retail.

eob• 12 years ago

Both groups exist.

Think of the "buying freedom" bump as the bump that happens when a new restaurant opens. A lot of people buying pot for the first time (or the first time in a long time) probably don't really care about pot that much. Not enough to break the law to buy it. It's just fun to try something new.

Replacing "Pot" with "Norwegian Cuisine" is maybe a useful exercise. I'm in the group that doesn't care much about either (from the consumer standpoint). I wouldn't break the law to smoke pot, nor would I break the law to eat Norwegian food. But if either was suddenly legalized, of course I'd go try them out a few times, why not?

todd3834• 12 years ago

A few months ago, one of these discussions came up and someone presented some interesting data on negative effects this had on students and the drop out rate. Sorry I do not have a link to the discussion but I would love to see if someone had that data.

miles_matthias2• 12 years ago

I live in Denver and work in Boulder, and honestly, I haven't noticed any change in people. The murder rate going down is awesome and having the state earn revenue is awesome, but the biggest misconception people have about Colorado right now (thanks to the media) is that it's a wild west of pot smoking lazy people stumbling around and acting up.

But really, there's been no change in how people act. The people that have always smoked it (hippies in the park and normal people at home) are still smoking it, and the people that don't smoke (myself included) still don't smoke.

So no lifestyle changes for the majority of the people in the state (except the people that get jobs now thanks to the legit industry and hopefully some lives saved by quality controlling the stuff) AND we get all the benefits.

Let's go national with this thing.

julienchastang• 12 years ago

Long time Boulder resident here. In regards to change, the homeless/transient situation in downtown Boulder and beyond has gotten completely out of control [1]. I now see transients/homeless where I did not in the past. I am not certain the marijuana laws are the reason for so many transients coming to Boulder, but it could be a contributing factor.

[1] http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_26064136/Boulder-councilm...

chenelson5• 12 years ago

Of course you're seeing transients/homeless where you didn't in the past. The City Council is playing Whac-A-Mole: the police blocked off significant portions of the downtown library green areas and patrol the river. Where do you expect them to go?

Besides, Boulder has been hostile to recreational marijuana. Denver had retail shops open on the 1st of January...it took until March or April for multiple shops to open. I doubt a couple months of legal weed has spiked the population.

Boulder, like San Francisco and Seattle, has always had a significant homeless population. The big change I've seen in Boulder is Conservatism and intolerance. Take Patti Adler, for example.

toddsiegel• 12 years ago

Agreed. The press coverage has been over the top. To the average Coloradan it's been a non-event. Smokers kept smoking and non-smokers still don't.

The only difference I notice is a small amount more of public smoking, but it could be my imagination.

miles_matthias2• 12 years ago

One other difference that a co-worker pointed out is that he's been asked by at least 3 tourists where the nearest weed shop is.

So now tourists ask us where the best places to hike & get weed are.

panzagl• 12 years ago

It will be interesting to see how the economic benefits hold up- Colorado has a history of boom and bust, whether from mining, ranching, military, tech, or tourism. It also has a history of making decisions during the boom that are unsustainable throughout the bust. As prices drop and more states legalize my guess is that the economic benefits will prove relatively modest.

noddingham• 12 years ago

I hear this kind of stuff every day on the radio and other news sources living in Colorado.

Here are some things to consider:

1) Only the revenue is really important to the politicians - there has been virtually no talk about using the money for rehabilitation programs, and only a little talk about using the money for drug education. So far the only tangible outcome I've heard was a proposed $3 million to be used to hire ~100 government personnel to handle administrative tasks related to marijuana sales and regulation. Given the fights that we see among politicians when it comes to spending other sources of revenue, I don't see it being any easier to get this new revenue spent appropriately either.

2) Correlation vs Causation re: lower crime. Who's to say it's not due to the beautiful sunny spring and summer that we have here in CO or the fact that it kept snowing in the mountains longer this year so people skied more? The one thing I have observed is that legalizing marijuana didn't convert a lot of non-users into users so at first blush it does not appear that legalizing marijuana has turned the state into a bunch of potheads (although I tire of hearing things like "Denver is the Silicon Valley of weed").

3) Because there's still no good research out on the effects (long, short, casual use) of marijuana (THC specifically) there is a lot of concern over the substantial increase in the amount of edibles, elixirs, and other marijuana infused products which can be purchased that are not well regulated or identified. The same argument can be made for the vapor/e-cig industry. Clearly identifying how much THC a product contains and what affect that will have on a person is much needed and should hopefully come about from the bills that Hickenlooper signed into law in May.

As others have said the reason you aren't hearing any news from Seattle/DC is because they do not have everything in place to allow stores to open up. Colorado moved quickly to both decriminalize as well as create regulations, tax structure, etc., which the other states have not done yet. Many states are watching CO to see how this plays out and based upon the revenue figures that are being released as long as there isn't a significant increase in directly correlated crime, I don't think the politicians will be able to turn down the money in the long run.

munificent• 12 years ago

Since the statistics in that article are terribly misleading, I took the effort to make a chart with some more data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOL...

It's based on the raw data here:

http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20...

Personally, I can't see any noticeable effect on crime except that drug violations and crimes against persons seem to be up this year. Or maybe I just didn't do a great job on the chart?

lowmagnet• 12 years ago

The point in the article was unclear; I think they meant to say something more along the lines of "crime didn't go up by eleventy-thousand percent" rather than "crime went down".

chrisgd• 12 years ago

Once more data comes in, I would like to see crime and revenue compared with crime and revenue in areas that instead legalized casino gambling.

notastartup• 12 years ago

Why isn't this happening here in Vancouver? What more proof do we need?

badman_ting• 12 years ago

Pre-legalization: "Crime will go up." Post-legalization: "Crime went down, but not because of the weed thing."

Well, okay then.

tzs• 12 years ago

According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30.

They need to also compare with demographically similar cities and counties that did not legalize marijuana. Crime is often heavily influenced by national or broad regional factors. You have to identify and account for this when trying to figure out how much of an affect a local factor (such as marijuana legalization in your state) had.

Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

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