A landmark study found that legalization could decrease the crime rate. The results of the study, which was widely believed to increase the crime rate, suggest that marijuana may not be the crime magnet that it is believed to be.
Study Shows Legal Cannabis Sales Reduce Crime
Contrary to popular belief among champions of the prison-industrial complex, closing down medical cannabis dispensaries does not reduce crime in their immediate vicinity.
A new landmark study shows legal weed actually reduces crime and increases walkability scores in legalized areas.
Marijuana has been labelled an ‘illicit’ drug, banned and ridiculed for over a hundred years, while the pharmaceutical industry and other related industries such as oil and motor have flourished.
Big Pharma peddles merchandise mainly derived from nature, before being engineered in a lab and patented for commercial purposes, as ‘legitimate’ drugs.
For thousands of years across the globe cannabis has been used by people in medicine and commerce.
The cannabis plant hemp could have put the automobile, oil and the plastics industries out of business before they had a chance to enrich the oligarchy and the Rockefeller family.
Industrial hemp could have replaced materials used in cars. It has many uses and can be made into wax, resin, rope, cloth paper and fuel.
And marijuana, which comes from the same species of plant as hemp, could have taken the study of medicine to new levels, where prevention would have replaced cure as doctrine, cutting out unnecessary medical treatments and dangerous pills.
Contrary to the fear mongering from the champion of the prison industrial complex, legal weed actually reduces crime.
In the study, titled, “Going to pot? The impact of dispensary closures on crime,” researchers Tom Y. Chang from the USC Marshall School of Business, and Mireille Jacobson from The Paul Merage School of Business at UC Irvine, looked at what happens with the government forced medical marijuana dispensaries to close. What they found was immediately following a closure of a dispensary — crime rates went up.
The researchers noted that dispensaries actually increase the ‘walkability score’ of a neighborhood which deters criminal activity.
Legalization resulted in the direct opposite, it reduced crime in its immediate vicinity, according to Mireille Jacobson, one of the co-authors of the study. The study illustrates how prohibition could ease criminal behavior and the prevalence of illegal black markets.
By decriminalizing marijuana, criminal gangs won't swoop in to protect sales territory and supply chains.
Image courtesy of: max_4_ganja
