In general, the data does not
demonstrate significant impact to law enforcement by marijuana legalization. In fact, two of the four states in our analysis report that police officers have begun to consider marijuana crimes low on their priority list when compared to other types of offenses. A piece of the puzzle that is easily
overlooked is the trend in marijuana- related crime rates in states that have not yet legalized marijuana, but border states that have. Te Nebraska Center for Justice Research reports that marijuana sales arrests increased in all county groups, and across the entire state in 2014. Tis increase resulted in a six-year, record high in the state. Tis leads to the question of whether, rather than instances of these crimes trailing off, it is instead the approach that has changed. If this proves to be the case over time, low crime rates are less a condition of the actual response to legalization, and more a response to law enforcement’s focus on investigating and documenting the crimes. Now let’s take a look at the economic
trends in our states of interest during the years that followed legalization. • When we examine the unemployment rates of these four states since 2001— when medical marijuana became legal in many of the United States—we see that they, like all other states, went through ups and downs as our nation’s economy fluctuated. Despite the expected variability, we see a couple of trends that are worth discussing in this data. One is that, for a majority of the time, three of the four states under review for this article were above the national average for unemployment. During the 18 years that this data was collected, only Colorado was below the national average, at 50 percent of the time. Alaska and Oregon were above the national average 83 percent and 94 percent of the time, respectively; and Washington
www.datia.org datia focus 35
was above the national average for 100 percent of the time. So, what does this mean? Marijuana
legalization can neither be credited for every positive change nor blamed for every downturn. Tese statistics aren’t enough to tell the entire story, but rather help us take the pulse of the overall health of the economies in these states. According to this single snapshot, we do not see a significant benefit to the economy of these four states.
• In 2015, Business Insider reported that marijuana sales in Washington state topped $1.4 million per day; but according to the data, we do not see an overall benefit in the unemployment rates as a result of this economic boom.
• Another possibility worth mentioning, is that we are only midway through the story in these four states. If we look at each of them, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have all
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
