According to research, in Colorado, after the legalization of marijuana, “…the black market, contrary to expectations, only grew after legalization; after legalization, the state rose to first place in marijuana use among teenagers, and the school system received no positive changes.
There was a surge in crimes such as robberies and car thefts. The growth in crime rates in 2016 exceeded 11 times the average among the 30 largest US cities. The number of murders increased by 10%”.
Taken from here. Please comment.
анонимный вопрос
To answer the question, I had to familiarize myself with the English-language report on the consequences of legalization provided in the bibliography at the end of the article.
The funniest part turned out to be the black market. Why did it grow? Because entrepreneurs from other states came to Colorado legally to stock up and then tried to move the product into their own states, where it remained illegal. This is obvious, as weed remained significantly more expensive there due to its illegality. Naturally, some of the traffic was intercepted, money was spent on this, and all of it entered the reporting; as a result, we see a paradoxical situation: it seems like legalization, but the volume of illegal operations is growing, and more funds are spent on suppressing them. In other words, federal agency expenditures increased to combat a business that is legalized in the state, and we are told about an increase in expenditures to fight the black market in the state. Just legalize weed in the other states, and these expenses will disappear; until then, suffer in silence.
When analyzing mortality, the report focuses on road deaths. When passing the marijuana legalization law, it was assumed that by increasing the number of people driving high, the number of drunk drivers would decrease, as it is safer to drive high. What came of this? I quote: “But while traffic deaths in general have declined in Colorado, the percentage of marijuana-related fatalities increased, the report said.” In other words, exactly what was wanted happened, but since the report was written by a commission fighting substances, they emphasize that more deaths are now passing through their department, and this, allegedly, is bad. Well, the fact that the state is not monolithic and contains different interest groups is a long-known fact; however, for citizens, the only important thing is that overall road mortality in the state has decreased.
The economic effect of legalization is such that in 2017 alone, marijuana sales volume amounted to one and a half billion dollars. In addition to regular taxes, marijuana is subject to special taxes, and through these alone in 2017, municipalities and the state collected 247 million dollars from citizens, or 2.3% of the state budget’s total revenue.
How did the state dispose of this money? Part of the money turned out to be spent on providing medical care to marijuana users, which can be considered at least somewhat legitimate spending, although this money could simply not have been taken, and people would have paid doctors themselves without the mediation of officials. But the majority went to various crap like funding schools or the police—that is, protectionist measures to develop some industries at the expense of others and direct embezzlement. Well, the efficiency of the state in such matters has been known for a long time and is similarly unsurprising.
Finally, I looked into what’s happening with crime. The source used in the article gives an account from a police sergeant about a “green rush” in the state, where adventurers from all over the country come to grow marijuana and make money from it. And since the state surrounded this business with regulatory hurdles, as it loves to do, people grow weed illegally—for example, they rent a house, tear up the floors, and set up a farm under the roof. Naturally, with full legality of the business, no one would think of bothering with such bullshit when it is cheaper to rent a piece of land than to set up underground farms in houses, while also violating the property rights of the owners of those very houses.
As for the 10% increase in the overall crime rate, I want to note that the influx of tourists and entrepreneurs is unlikely to be accurately accounted for by state authorities, unlike the crime rate, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the rate per 100,000 people remained roughly the same as it was.
Summary. Most of the problems mentioned in the article are either contrived, related to remaining legislative restrictions in this industry, or due to specifics of statistical accounting (some things became more visible, such as doctor visits, and some less, such as the number of state residents). As marijuana is legalized in all states, everything will settle down quite quickly, and people will become richer and happier.
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