Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado • Hacker News Board

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#71

Post by lotsofmangos » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:25 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #28

lotsofmangos wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing the 52% drop to a 47% drop doesn't change the point much. edit - though I agree that the data isn't good enough to really support any conclusions yet. That would take about ten years and several different cities.

Besides a failure to understand which number is which is a percentage change, the data they link to shows a 24% increase in crimes against people. I don't know why anyone thought this was a good enough article to upvote. Someone out there is working on a good article about the effects of legalization on crime rates. This isn't it.

To be honest, beyond the obvious fall in weed related arrests I wouldn't expect legalisation of the stuff to have much of an effect on crime either way above the background noise level, at least in the short term. You might be able to tease something out with a long term epidemiological study, but that will take a lot of time and a lot of data points. I could be wrong but I suspect that reality will be stubbornly a lot more boring on this particular topic than either the doomsayers or the evangelists will like. On a long term, I could see some real and lasting benefits from the reduced arrests and incarcerations and the social identity effects of dissociating the use of the drug from crime.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#72

Post by DatBear » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #54

DatBear wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just worded it wrong, really... It should say it's 52.9% of what it was in 2013, meaning it is a 47.1% drop. But linking to data for 5 months and then only using the 4 you want to use to skew numbers seems pretty ridiculous to me. And then in the same page there's data for drug/narcotics violations which isn't even mentioned because it is going up (21% more) even though there are supposedly plummeting marijuana…

It's just the first thing I honed in on when I was checking the article. I could start talking about significant digits but I don't think it's necessary to really put more work into this.

Yea, I just read the article again and it seems more ridiculous than I thought at first glance.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#73

Post by panzagl » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:26 PM UTC

It will be interesting to see how the economic benefits hold up- Colorado has a history of boom and bust, whether from mining, ranching, military, tech, or tourism. It also has a history of making decisions during the boom that are unsustainable throughout the bust. As prices drop and more states legalize my guess is that the economic benefits will prove relatively modest.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#74

Post by fidotron » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:30 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #53

fidotron wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, but the same is true for alcohol, and prohibition doesn't exactly seem to work there. In all cases encouraging individual responsibility and providing frameworks to help people get their shit together when things do go bad seem to be more viable in the long run. This is related to why I find things such as the anti-suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge slightly perverse. You really need to be asking why p…

Do people who're caught by the nets make further attempts? The reality of jumping off something tall could plausibly make a difference to people.

Do people still jump if the nets are there? Surely they just go and find somewhere else.

The only people that seem to claim it would make a difference are those that jumped off something without protection, somehow survived, and in the process had the epiphany, but that seems ever so slightly unlikely to occur if there's a net in the way.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#75

Post by tootie » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:30 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #15

The linked data shows 19 murders in the first five months of 2013, 11 murders in the same period in 2014. First, this is very noisy data to make any predictions from. (I guess it's a good thing to have so few murders that it's hard to make generalizations.) March 2014 alone had 5 murders compared to three last year. Second, this isn't a 52.9% drop, even if you exclude May, which makes the drop from 17 to 9. It's a 47…

The notion that decriminalization has caused a drop in murders is specious, anyone claiming that it was cause a spike in serious crime was clearly wrong which is the point he is making. He clearly disclaims that this isn't proof of a long-term correlation.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#76

Post by noddingham » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

I hear this kind of stuff every day on the radio and other news sources living in Colorado.

Here are some things to consider:

1) Only the revenue is really important to the politicians - there has been virtually no talk about using the money for rehabilitation programs, and only a little talk about using the money for drug education. So far the only tangible outcome I've heard was a proposed $3 million to be used to hire ~100 government personnel to handle administrative tasks related to marijuana sales and regulation. Given the fights that we see among politicians when it comes to spending other sources of revenue, I don't see it being any easier to get this new revenue spent appropriately either.

2) Correlation vs Causation re: lower crime. Who's to say it's not due to the beautiful sunny spring and summer that we have here in CO or the fact that it kept snowing in the mountains longer this year so people skied more? The one thing I have observed is that legalizing marijuana didn't convert a lot of non-users into users so at first blush it does not appear that legalizing marijuana has turned the state into a bunch of potheads (although I tire of hearing things like "Denver is the Silicon Valley of weed").

3) Because there's still no good research out on the effects (long, short, casual use) of marijuana (THC specifically) there is a lot of concern over the substantial increase in the amount of edibles, elixirs, and other marijuana infused products which can be purchased that are not well regulated or identified. The same argument can be made for the vapor/e-cig industry. Clearly identifying how much THC a product contains and what affect that will have on a person is much needed and should hopefully come about from the bills that Hickenlooper signed into law in May.

As others have said the reason you aren't hearing any news from Seattle/DC is because they do not have everything in place to allow stores to open up. Colorado moved quickly to both decriminalize as well as create regulations, tax structure, etc., which the other states have not done yet. Many states are watching CO to see how this plays out and based upon the revenue figures that are being released as long as there isn't a significant increase in directly correlated crime, I don't think the politicians will be able to turn down the money in the long run.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#77

Post by munificent » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:35 PM UTC

Since the statistics in that article are terribly misleading, I took the effort to make a chart with some more data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOL...

It's based on the raw data here:

http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20...

Personally, I can't see any noticeable effect on crime except that drug violations and crimes against persons seem to be up this year. Or maybe I just didn't do a great job on the chart?

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#78

Post by chenelson » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #60

There was a pretty informative round table on cannabis business hosted on Jason Calacanis' This Week in Startups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zZ8RgfTFzA&feature=youtu.be... One useful quote from there is not to get euphoric over revenue figures - first few months "people are not buying marijuana, people are buying freedom". A variety of things, such as novelty effect, natural curiosity and even social currency ac…

People aren't purchasing freedom, they're purchasing convenience. And this isn't a new product. Also, as prices fall in the legal retail trade, shouldn't we expect more competition with the black market?

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#79

Post by TallGuyShort » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:46 PM UTC

binarymax wrote: post #6

The second point seems like it is a stretch. Of course, crime rate of illegal marijuana dropped when it was legalized. What I'd really like to see if related crime has dropped or increased - such as DUI, Theft, Assault, etc. --Edit-- Thanks all for pointing out the piece I skimmed over :) ...However I am still very curious to smaller offenses and misdemeanors. It will be years before we see good statistics, but those…

>> Of course, crime rate of illegal marijuana dropped when it was legalized.

I think this is a more important point than either you or the author realize. Yes it seems obvious, but was it worth calling marijuana users criminals in the first place? If you stop arresting all these people, and negative side effects don't increase, why were they getting arrested to begin with? Getting arrested is a huge deal and impacts your future job prospects, not to mention the short term aspects of possibly being jailed, etc. If that all happens before legalization, but not after legalization, can we really justify the seemingly arbitrary consequences in these people's lives? All other things being equal, getting a bunch of people arrested and calling them criminals is not necessarily better than leaving them be and calling them normal.

Re: Six Months After Legalizing Marijuana, Two Big Things Have Happened in Colorado

#80

Post by zevyoura » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #27

[deleted] wrote: post #13

[deleted]

Of course, but the same is true for alcohol, and prohibition doesn't exactly seem to work there. In all cases encouraging individual responsibility and providing frameworks to help people get their shit together when things do go bad seem to be more viable in the long run. This is related to why I find things such as the anti-suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge slightly perverse. You really need to be asking why p…

This New Yorker article[0] makes a pretty compelling case that the Golden Gate nets would be very effective; it's somewhat of an unusual case in that it's such an iconic suicide destination. [0]http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/13/031013fa_fact?cu...