For decades, opponents of marijuana legalization warned that more cannabis would lead to more chaos. However, new data suggests it’s quite the opposite.
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A study, published in Economic Modeling, found that legalizing recreational adult-use cannabis was associated with lower violent crime rates, while medical marijuana legalization was linked to reductions in property crime.
Violent crime was defined as aggravated assault, murder, rape, and robbery, while property crime included larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. The authors emphasize that these reductions are in violent crime and property crime as a whole, rather than each offense falling individually.
Interestingly, the researchers did not find that recreational marijuana legalization also lowers property crime.
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While the initial analyses suggested that cannabis legalization might increase property crime rates, once state-specific time trends were incorporated into a synthetic specification, the researchers found the effect to be negative and statistically insignificant. Thus, the researchers warned about the importance of empirical design.
Using different analytical models and FBI crime data from 1995 to 2019, the researchers examined the relationship between cannabis laws and crime rates across all 50 states in the United States — the first study to do so. The researchers were from Jack Welch College of Business and Technology, Barnard College, National Chengchi University in Taiwan, and Longwood University.
“What emerges from our multi-step analysis is a birds-eye view of legalization: medical and recreational legalization have different impacts and operate through diverse channels, with significant lag effects,” the researchers wrote.
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However, the decline in crime rates does not appear overnight. Importantly, the researchers found that the impact of cannabis legislation on crime was gradual, with the most powerful effects occurring several years later.
“The diverse and potentially time-varying impacts of medical and recreational legalization raise a cautionary note to policymakers: those considering legalization should wait a few years before pronouncing the cost-benefit impact, focus on the specific type of legalization, and study closely the outcomes from similar states,” the researchers wrote.
Despite the vast majority of states legalizing cannabis in some form, the United States still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance on the federal level. As the government mulls a move to Schedule III, these trends are important to consider when designing relevant policy.