The Effect of Medical Marijuana Laws on Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data, 1990-2006
PLOS ONE, 9(3): e92816, 2014
By: PLOS
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092816
Report a broken linkMarijuana-Related Uses
This article challenges the notion that legalizing medical marijuana leads to increased incidences of violent or property crime. The authors used U.S. state panel data to analyze the association between states with medical marijuana laws and crime statistics and did not find a positive correlation between those laws and crime rates. In fact, the authors found some indication that medical marijuana laws may be associated with a reduction in murder rates.