Positive policing changes after cannabis legalization

July 24, 2018

Science Daily/Washington State University

Washington State University researchers have found that marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington has not hurt police effectiveness. In fact, clearance rates for certain crimes have improved.

Clearance rates -- the number of cases solved, typically by the arrest of a suspect -- were falling for violent and property crimes in the two states before they authorized retail sales of marijuana late in 2012. The rates then improved significantly in Colorado and Washington while remaining essentially unchanged in the rest of the nation, according to the researchers' analysis of monthly FBI data from 2010 through 2015.

"Our results show that legalization did not have a negative impact on clearance rates in Washington or Colorado," said David Makin assistant professor in WSU's Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology "In fact, for specific crimes it showed a demonstrated, significant improvement on those clearance rates, specifically within the realm of property crime."

Writing this month in the journal Police Quarterly the researchers said legalization created a "natural experiment" to study the effects of a sweeping policy change on public health and safety.

"If you think about our history, it's rare where you have something that is entirely illegal that then becomes legal," said Makin. "And we have an opportune moment to study to what extent that particular change had on society."

Citizens in 12 states have voted on marijuana legalization and proponents in all of them have argued that it would let police reallocate resources to property and violent crimes. The Colorado measure specifically says it is "in the interest of the efficient use of law enforcement resources" while the Washington one says it "allows law enforcement resources to be focused on violent and property crimes."

The WSU study bears that out. It finds that after legalization:

·     Arrest rates for marijuana possession dropped considerably. Following legalization in 2012, they dropped nearly 50 percent in Colorado and more than 50 percent in Washington.

·     Violent crime clearance rates shifted upward.

·     Burglary and motor vehicle theft clearance rates "increased dramatically."

·     Overall property crime clearance rates jumped sharply and reversed a down ward trend in Colorado.

The improvement in burglary clearance rates is particularly striking for Washington, Makin said, as the state's property crime rate is higher than most.

"It demonstrates just how critical these types of policy changes can be," Makin said. "I would offer it truly demonstrates why we need empirical data to support these types of studies, so we can understand to what extent crime and communities are influenced as more and more states move to legalization."

As Makin describes, this research is not without its limitations. He offers "one of the pressing limitations within this study is that not all agencies equally report their clearance rates. It is entirely possible that as we expand our data collection to include additional years, more states, and a wider set of agencies, these results could change."

Makin also acknowledged that while he and his colleagues found a correlation between legalization and clearance rates, they do not have an explicit cause. The improvements could be the result of more overtime for law enforcement officers, new strategies or a focus on particular crimes. But Makin said he suspects that the loss of the specific reporting category of marijuana arrests prompted police departments to reevaluate their priorities, particularly in "boots on the ground" cases.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180724110031.htm

Oregon's marijuana legalization prompted big drop in sales in Washington's border counties

Economists find a reduction of legally purchased pot products moving illegally out of Washington

September 5, 2017

Science Daily/University of Oregon

Three days after recreational marijuana sales became legal in Oregon, sales across the border in Washington, where retail availability already existed, dropped by 41 percent, reports a team of University of Oregon economists.

The study also suggests that illegal cross-border movement, or diversion, of legally produced marijuana sold at retail outlets across state borders is a real concern but not occurring at alarming levels.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published the study this week as part of its working papers series.

"We found that the majority of marijuana sold in Washington is actually staying there," said study co-author Benjamin Hansen, a health economist at the UO. "We found that prior to Oregon's legalization 11.9 percent was potentially being diverted out of Washington overall, and it dropped to 7.5 percent after Oregon's legalization."

The research tapped a naturally occurring experiment to explore the issue of small-scale trafficking due to cross-border shopping by Oregon residents in Washington, said Caroline Weber, a professor in the UO's Department of Economics.

Washington was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana. The state's regulatory and tracking requirements covering production to sales provided a wealth of data, she said. The UO team studied Washington's sales for the two months before and after Oregon's legal market opened on Oct. 1, 2015.

In doing so, researchers were able to address one of the key concerns of the Cole Memorandum issued in 2013 by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. It called for federal law enforcement officials to monitor the diversion of sales across borders as states moved to legalize medical and recreational marijuana.

"There has been a lot of debate about a federal crackdown on marijuana," Hansen said, referring to signals expressed by the Trump Administration. "Our study says that 93 percent of marijuana sold in Washington is probably staying there now. There's probably not a lot you can do about the remaining share that is being diverted at this point. This is just the likely consequence of partial prohibition."

The diversion data also included the flow of retail-sold marijuana in Washington to neighboring Idaho and to British Columbia.

Because federal law still classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, grouped with heroin and methamphetamines, illegal cross-border movement could be targeted by law enforcement. One such method is by using randomized traffic searches along state borders.

Prior to Oregon's market opening, an average of 1,662 retail sales transactions occurred daily in Washington's Clark and Klickitat counties, just across the Columbia River from Portland. Given that 293,840 vehicles went between Oregon and those counties daily in 2015, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation, "a policy of randomly searching border-crossing vehicles could expect to find diverted recreational marijuana in just 0.47 percent of stops," the researchers concluded.

"You might expect larger diversion when states around a legalized one are not allowing recreational or medical market sales," Hansen said, adding that California, based on this study, likely will experience far less diversion because all of its neighboring states allow for some form of legal marijuana use.

The analysis by the team, which also included UO economist Keaton Miller, also found that randomized searches along Washington's Spokane and Whitman counties with Idaho, where marijuana is illegal, might expect to find illegally transported marijuana at most 4 percent of the time.

In the two months prior to the opening of Oregon's recreational market, 5,624 kilograms (12,398 pounds) of marijuana were sold in Washington; 670 kilograms (1,477 pounds), or 11.9 percent, went across state lines. Factoring in the 41 percent drop in sales along the Oregon border and no decline elsewhere in Washington implies that only 7.5 percent is illegally leaving Washington today, the research team concluded.

"Given the data available, we've been able to study this natural experiment to speak to a question that a lot of people in law enforcement and government care about," Weber said. "If we had instead found that 60 percent of Washington's marijuana was being diverted, then it would have suggested a whole different approach to thinking about legalization moving forward."

Small amounts of illegal, small-scale trafficking is to be expected as long as the U.S. does not have uniform policies, Hansen said.

Based on the data, the researchers concluded, people seem to prefer purchasing recreational marijuana in legal recreational markets instead of through the black market or as medical marijuana or growing their own.

"People value being able to go to a store, seeing the variety of products that are offered there and purchasing it in a retail store," Weber said.

Paper access: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23762

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170905134452.htm

Marijuana use among college students on rise following Oregon legalization

June 14, 2017

Science Daily/Oregon State University

College students attending an Oregon university are using more marijuana now that the drug is legal for recreational use, but the increase is largely among students who also report recent heavy use of alcohol, a new study has found.

Oregon State University researchers compared marijuana usage among college students before and after legalization and found that usage increased at several colleges and universities across the nation but it increased more at the Oregon university. None of the universities were identified in the study.

"It does appear that legalization is having an effect on usage, but there is some nuance to the findings that warrant further investigation," said the study's lead author, David Kerr, an associate professor in the School of Psychological Science in OSU's College of Liberal Arts.

"We found that overall, at schools in different parts of the country, there's been an increase in marijuana use among college students, so we can't attribute that increase to legalization alone."

The results were published today in the journal Addiction. Co-authors are Harold Bae and Sandi Phibbs of OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences and Adam Kern of the University of Michigan.

The study is believed to be the first to examine marijuana usage patterns following legalization of recreational marijuana in Oregon and the first to examine the effects of any state's legalization on college students. Voters in Oregon approved legalization in 2014 and the law took effect in 2015.

Oregon's legalization of marijuana is part of a larger trend among U.S. states, but little research has been done so far to understand the impact. In their study, Kerr and his colleagues set out to begin addressing some of those questions.

"It's an important current issue and even the most basic effects have not been studied yet, especially in Oregon," he said. "There are a lot of open questions about how legalization might affect new users, existing users and use of other substances."

Researchers used information collected in the Healthy Minds Study, a national survey of college students' mental health and well-being -- including substance use -- conducted by the University of Michigan. The study is designed to give colleges and universities information to help them understand the needs of their student populations.

As part of the survey, participants are asked about marijuana and cigarette use in the previous 30 days, as well as frequency of heavy alcohol use within the previous two weeks.

Using data from a large public university in Oregon and six other four-year universities around the country where recreational marijuana is not legal, researchers compared rates of marijuana use before and after the drug was legalized in Oregon. They also examined frequency of heavy alcohol use and cigarette use at those points.

The researchers found that the overall rates of marijuana use rose across the seven schools. Rates of binge drinking -- where a person consumes four to five or more drinks in a period of about two hours -- stayed the same and cigarette use declined in that period.

"It's likely that the rise in marijuana use across the country is tied in part to liberalization of attitudes about the drug as more states legalize it, for recreational or medical purposes or both," Kerr said. "So legalization both reflects changing attitudes and may influence them even outside of states where the drug is legal."

Researchers also found that marijuana use rates were generally higher, overall, among male students; those living in Greek or off-campus housing; those not identifying as heterosexual; and those attending smaller, private institutions.

One area where legalization had a marked impact was among college students who indicated recent binge drinking; students at the Oregon university who reported binge drinking were 73 percent more likely to also report marijuana use compared to similar peers at schools in states where marijuana remains illegal.

"We think this tells us more about the people who binge drink than about the effects of alcohol itself," Kerr said. "Those who binge drink may be more open to marijuana use if it is easy to access, whereas those who avoid alcohol for cultural or lifestyle reasons might avoid marijuana regardless of its legal status."

The researchers also found that Oregon students under age 21 -- the minimum legal age for purchasing and using marijuana -- showed higher rates of marijuana use than those over 21.

"This was a big surprise to us, because legalization of use is actually having an impact on illegal use," said Bae, the study's primary statistician.

These initial findings about marijuana use among college students help form a picture of how legalization may be affecting people, Kerr said, but more study is needed before researchers can quantify the harms or net benefits of legalization for young people.

"Americans are conducting a big experiment with marijuana," Kerr said. "We need science to tell us what the results of it are."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170614160510.htm

Legalization of marijuana in Washington had no effect on teens' access to drug

Study to be presented at Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting shows no change in proportion of adolescents who find it 'easy' to access marijuana after its recreational use was legalized for adults

April 30, 2016

Science Daily/American Academy of Pediatrics

Despite concerns that legalizing marijuana use for adults would make it easier for adolescents to get ahold of it, a new study in Washington State shows that teens find it no easier now than before the law was passed in 2012.

An abstract of the study, "Adolescents' Ease of Access to Marijuana Before and After Legalization of Marijuana in Washington State," will be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting in Baltimore on Sunday, May 1. Researchers compared 2010 and 2014 data from the Washington State Healthy Youth Survey. Each year's survey included questions about ease of access to marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and other illicit drugs.

There was virtually no change in the proportion of teens who reported it was "easy" to access marijuana in 2010 (55 percent), compared to 2014 (54 percent) after the new law was enacted, according to the study. This seemingly good news was tempered by additional findings suggesting that current public health efforts around drug abuse prevention may be less effective for marijuana than for other substances teens now perceive as more difficult to obtain. Significantly more adolescents said it was "hard" to access alcohol in 2014 (47 percent, compared with 43 percent in 2010), cigarettes (53 percent in 2014; 42 percent in 2010), and other illegal drugs such as cocaine, LSD, and amphetamines (82 percent in 2014; 75 percent in 2010).

"It is both surprising and reassuring that teens didn't perceive that marijuana was easier to access after it was legalized for recreational use by adults," said senior investigator Andrew Adesman, MD, FAAP, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York. "It was interesting and somewhat concerning, though, that while teens responded that it was harder to access cigarettes, alcohol, and psychoactive drugs abuse in 2014 compared to 4 years earlier, they didn't report increased difficulty in obtaining marijuana during that same time period," he said.

Principal investigator Natalie Colaneri said she hopes the findings will prompt increased efforts to reduce teens' access to marijuana in Washington and other states now considering the legalization of adult recreational marijuana use. "Given the detrimental health effects associated with adolescent marijuana use, it is important that states that choose to legalize marijuana take steps to minimize use by teens. States should specifically implement measures that make it more difficult for teens to access marijuana in the first place," she said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160430100249.htm