Medical Marijuana and Crime: Further Evidence From the Western States

State medical marijuana programs have proliferated in the United States in recent years. Marijuana sales are now estimated in billions of dollars per year with over two million patients, yet it remains unlawful under Federal law, and there is limited and conflicting evidence about potential effects...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of drug issues Vol. 46; no. 2; p. 122
Main Authors Shepard, Edward M, Blackley, Paul R
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Thousand Oaks SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC 01.04.2016
Subjects
Costs
Crime
Criminal statistics
Drug legalization
Drug use
Economic models
Estimates
Fines & penalties
Illegal drug operations
Imprisonment
Law
Law enforcement
Legislatures
Marijuana
Medical marijuana
Medicine
Mortality
Patients
Property
Public officials
Public policy
Public sector
Reforms
Society
Standard deviation
Studies
Substance abuse treatment
New York
Montana
United States > US
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
New Jersey
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Summary:State medical marijuana programs have proliferated in the United States in recent years. Marijuana sales are now estimated in billions of dollars per year with over two million patients, yet it remains unlawful under Federal law, and there is limited and conflicting evidence about potential effects on society. We present new evidence about potential effects on crime by estimating an economic crime model following the general approach developed by Becker. Data from 11 states in the Western United States are used to estimate the model and test hypotheses about potential effects on rates of violent and property crime. Fixed effects methods are applied to control for state-specific factors, with adjustments for first-order autocorrelation and cross-section heteroskedasticity. There is no evidence of negative spillover effects from medical marijuana laws (MMLs) on violent or property crime. Instead, we find significant drops in rates of violent crime associated with state MMLs.
ISSN:0022-0426
1945-1369
DOI:10.1177/0022042615623983