6 ms·

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

188 points by ca98am79 12y ago

notastartup 12y ago
Why isn't this happening here in Vancouver? What more proof do we need?
badman_ting 12y ago
Pre-legalization: "Crime will go up." Post-legalization: "Crime went down, but not because of the weed thing." Well, okay then.
kenjackson 12y ago
Curious, have we seen similar data in Washington/Seattle -- another place where it was legalized?
- big_youth 12y ago
  Washington has not opened it's first shops yet, the official start date is July 8th.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- larrykubin 12y ago
  Here in Seattle, things are moving slowly. The first stores haven't even opened up yet.
  - ozten 12y ago
    Yep. The first store is scheduled to open next Tuesday http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023970923_potlicense2xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023970923_potlicense...
binarymax 12y ago
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 elements will be politically crucial in pushing for wider adoption.
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  > According to government data, the Denver city- and > county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational > marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared > to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 > through April 30.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    Their math is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977655
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      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.
      - danielweber 12y ago
        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.
xienze 12y ago
> According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. I think it's probably a stretch to link these two things together... Also, it sounds like the government is already writing checks based on "predicted" income levels 4x what they are today. I think legalization is a good idea but I wish people would give things a couple years before drawing meaningful conclusions from the data.
rwl 12y ago
This sounds like a great outcome, and I support legalization for basically these reasons. More revenue for state governments, less violence, less law-enforcement time wasted on drug offences, and less crowding of prisons with non-violent drug offenders are all good things. But surely there have been downsides, too, even if they're not the ones that fear-mongerers predicted. Can anyone in Colorado speak to what those are?
- tolas 12y ago
  It's hard to decide which dispensary to go to? But seriously, I live and work in Downtown Denver and have seen no change for the worse, and frankly haven't heard any evidence that any of the assumed negative effects (ie: increase usage among teens and youth) have happened. Denver is one happy (and healthy) city. Legalization is a no brainer that is simply being held up nationwide due to outdated moral inertia.
- akmiller 12y ago
  I'm not in Colorado but I saw one of the downsides the other day which is the manufacture of items like candy bars with multiple serving sizes of THC in the one bar. People aren't paying much attention to the serving sizes and there appears to be no restrictions in place yet on how much can be in a given food item. I'm in favor of legalization but there may need to be some more restrictions in place on how much THC could be included in any one item.
  - tolas 12y ago
    This is true. It takes responsibility on the users part and possibly more education on the sellers part. But certainly the same is true with alcohol, caffeine, etc. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/01/caffeine-overdose-prom-king/11863631/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/01/caf...
    - haswell 12y ago
      > One teaspoon of the powder contains up to 1,600 milligrams of caffeine — about 70 cans of Red Bull. Something is a bit off here.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- otoburb 12y ago
  >Drugs are a person by person issue. Now you might say, yeah, if it wasn't x substance, it'd be y. Alcohol addiction comes to mind as another substitute that is depressing to watch or be the victim of. Does anybody know if marijuana side effects tend to induce violence or impaired decision making as compared to alcohol?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - tenementfunster 12y ago
      First, quit referring to it as "dope" since that is heroin, not marijuana. I suspect you know that but, for whatever reason, you've got a beef with people that don't have the iron skull you apparently have. I guess I'd like to know what you think about people on depression/anxiety/bipolar meds since you have such a strong opinion on what a makes up "clear head"?
      - narrowrail 12y ago
        My grandma, who was born in 1901, used to refer to any substance considered illegal as "dope." Of course, she had her 4oz hot-toddy every evening and smoked 2 packs per day. Most people that follow the mainstream view of controlled substances do not care about the nuances; drugs are bad (unless sold by big pharma).
      - bparsnips 12y ago
        I've never heard of dope referring to heroin, I think this is a US centric usage.
- chucknelson 12y ago
  You could attribute that to most things we observe as a society. Let us all reflect on the solitary anecdotes that fuel many technology arguments, especially iOS vs Android in recent years. "All of my friends says iOS sucks and have moved to Android!" "That can't be, all of my friends hated their Galaxy phones and moved to iPhone!"
danielweber 12y ago
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 47.1% drop. This is a very low quality article.
- xyzzy123 12y ago
  Agreed. I'm pro decriminalization and/or legalization, but a 52% drop in the murder rate due to the legalization of marijuana doesn't even pass the laugh test let alone the kind of analysis people are proposing here.
- DatBear 12y ago
  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 convictions. Also they stated that the crime rate in Denver is going down, yet the data shows the exact opposite. Whole article seems like cherrypicking at its finest.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    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.
    - DatBear 12y ago
      Yea, I just read the article again and it seems more ridiculous than I thought at first glance.
- 12y ago
transfire 12y ago
I worry about what will happen when the next GOP President takes office. Will there be a sudden federal crackdown? If that happens then I think it is inevitable that the US will devolve into a tyranny --just as Plato said, all democracies ultimately do.
- tolas 12y ago
  I think it's pretty easy to argue that this is a states rights issue and should be left to the states. Nothing they could do would stop the momentum that we have in Colorado. Not to mention that'd you'd be putting tens of thousands of people out of a job if you tried to "crack down" on one of the fastest growing industries in the country (where it's legal). Job creators.
  - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
    It is also pretty easy to argue that the feds need to just make it legal and then let the states go from there. Just like with alcohol where various states have slightly different rules but, for the most part, you can get booze just about where ever and when ever you want.
- derwiki 12y ago
  Could a new GOP president retroactively charge dispensary customers with illegal possession?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    It wouldn't be "retroactively" any more than all criminal prosecutions (which, in the absence of precrime legislation, necessarily address events in the past) are. Subject to the applicable statutes of limitations, as long as the federal laws are on the books, yes, people who committed offenses at a time when the those offenses were not prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch could be charged when the prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch change. That's sort of the key distinction between "prosecutorial priorities" and "laws".
  - 12y ago
chipgap98 12y ago
> This November, it's all but certain that D.C. will vote on a marijuana ballot measure and even pass it, setting up a battle with Congress to legalize. It will be interesting to see what happens with this vote. The marijuana debate is in a completely different place than it was 16 years ago when Congress blocked the counting of the votes for medical marijuana in D.C., but I could still see them interfering with the vote again.
- r00fus 12y ago
  Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - bladegash 12y ago
    Yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule
    - ihnorton 12y ago
      Relatedly, the motto on D.C. license plates is "Taxation without representation": http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Washington,_D.C._license_plate.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Washingto...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation? Yes, all DC Council legislation is subject to Congressional review before it becomes law. (Government of the capital district is a Congressional power under Article I of the Constitution.)
Throwaway1224 12y ago
the graff with the addiction rate vs. drug control spending is misleading. while the addiction rate is constant, the population is growing, meaning the total number of addicted people would be rising. graff graff.
- k__ 12y ago
  I thought the problem with drugs isn't the addiction but the black market. The people get addicted anyway, but now the money needed to cure them goes where it can help and not to the mob.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    I suspect it will be like the lottery money that was supposedly destined for the public schools, and it will just turn into a slush fund the legislature and governor can spend as they please.
- DatBear 12y ago
  The total number of non-addicted people is also rising, by that logic, which is why % is in there...
- kteofanidis 12y ago
  It is misleading only in that the spending should have been per capita. I don't think that changes the point though which is that however much you spend it is just money wasted. As far as I am concerned money shouldn't be thrown away when the approach obviously isn't working no matter how much you think the goal is worth it. For the record I don't agree that the government should ban substances outright, just make sure they are labeled properly for the harm they do.
martin1b 12y ago
It's a long stretch to argue a decline in crime is attributed to drug use. Spin the numbers however you wish, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out the truth... If I were in law enforcement, I'd feel pretty slighted that drug users figured out how to take credit for some of my work.
- gknoy 12y ago
  Perhaps it's more related than you think: If pot is legal, police can spend their valuable time policing other things, and making a difference in those areas.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  The next time the police reduce broadly-based crime rates will be the first time. Demographics and environmental effects control this.
prostoalex 12y ago
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&a&utm_content=bufferc7b72&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer 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 accumulation (people who live in Colorado/Washington brag to their friends outside of those states) motivate the first purchases, you have to look at longer timeline to properly extrapolate the expected sales.
- chenelson 12y ago
  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?
  - narrowrail 12y ago
    Currently, in CO, the legal retail prices are > than the black market was in the '90s. The black market is 50% of retail.
  - eob 12y ago
    Both groups exist. Think of the "buying freedom" bump as the bump that happens when a new restaurant opens. A lot of people buying pot for the first time (or the first time in a long time) probably don't really care about pot that much. Not enough to break the law to buy it. It's just fun to try something new. Replacing "Pot" with "Norwegian Cuisine" is maybe a useful exercise. I'm in the group that doesn't care much about either (from the consumer standpoint). I wouldn't break the law to smoke pot, nor would I break the law to eat Norwegian food. But if either was suddenly legalized, of course I'd go try them out a few times, why not?
    - chenelson 12y ago
todd3834 12y ago
A few months ago, one of these discussions came up and someone presented some interesting data on negative effects this had on students and the drop out rate. Sorry I do not have a link to the discussion but I would love to see if someone had that data.
miles_matthias 12y ago
I live in Denver and work in Boulder, and honestly, I haven't noticed any change in people. The murder rate going down is awesome and having the state earn revenue is awesome, but the biggest misconception people have about Colorado right now (thanks to the media) is that it's a wild west of pot smoking lazy people stumbling around and acting up. But really, there's been no change in how people act. The people that have always smoked it (hippies in the park and normal people at home) are still smoking it, and the people that don't smoke (myself included) still don't smoke. So no lifestyle changes for the majority of the people in the state (except the people that get jobs now thanks to the legit industry and hopefully some lives saved by quality controlling the stuff) AND we get all the benefits. Let's go national with this thing.
- toddsiegel 12y ago
  Agreed. The press coverage has been over the top. To the average Coloradan it's been a non-event. Smokers kept smoking and non-smokers still don't. The only difference I notice is a small amount more of public smoking, but it could be my imagination.
- julienchastang 12y ago
  Long time Boulder resident here. In regards to change, the homeless/transient situation in downtown Boulder and beyond has gotten completely out of control [1]. I now see transients/homeless where I did not in the past. I am not certain the marijuana laws are the reason for so many transients coming to Boulder, but it could be a contributing factor. [1] http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_26064136/Boulder-councilman-merchants-warn-of-downtown http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_26064136/Boulder-councilm...
  - chenelson 12y ago
    Of course you're seeing transients/homeless where you didn't in the past. The City Council is playing Whac-A-Mole: the police blocked off significant portions of the downtown library green areas and patrol the river. Where do you expect them to go? Besides, Boulder has been hostile to recreational marijuana. Denver had retail shops open on the 1st of January...it took until March or April for multiple shops to open. I doubt a couple months of legal weed has spiked the population. Boulder, like San Francisco and Seattle, has always had a significant homeless population. The big change I've seen in Boulder is Conservatism and intolerance. Take Patti Adler, for example.
panzagl 12y ago
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.
noddingham 12y ago
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.
munificent 12y ago
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/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOLjZx81LJ_SmKa-8bJEXz4GyA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOL... It's based on the raw data here: http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2012/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2012.pdf http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2013/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2013.pdf http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2014/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2014.pdf 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?
- lowmagnet 12y ago
  The point in the article was unclear; I think they meant to say something more along the lines of "crime didn't go up by eleventy-thousand percent" rather than "crime went down".
chrisgd 12y ago
Once more data comes in, I would like to see crime and revenue compared with crime and revenue in areas that instead legalized casino gambling.
tzs 12y ago
> According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30. They need to also compare with demographically similar cities and counties that did not legalize marijuana. Crime is often heavily influenced by national or broad regional factors. You have to identify and account for this when trying to figure out how much of an affect a local factor (such as marijuana legalization in your state) had.

188 points by ca98am79 12y ago

Why isn't this happening here in Vancouver? What more proof do we need?

Pre-legalization: "Crime will go up." Post-legalization: "Crime went down, but not because of the weed thing." Well, okay then.

kenjackson 12y ago

Curious, have we seen similar data in Washington/Seattle -- another place where it was legalized?

big_youth 12y ago
Washington has not opened it's first shops yet, the official start date is July 8th.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
larrykubin 12y ago
Here in Seattle, things are moving slowly. The first stores haven't even opened up yet.
- ozten 12y ago
  Yep. The first store is scheduled to open next Tuesday http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023970923_potlicense2xml.html http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023970923_potlicense...

binarymax 12y ago

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 elements will be politically crucial in pushing for wider adoption.

steveklabnik 12y ago
> According to government data, the Denver city- and > county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational > marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared > to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 > through April 30.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Their math is wrong. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7977655
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    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.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      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.

xienze 12y ago

> According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. I think it's probably a stretch to link these two things together... Also, it sounds like the government is already writing checks based on "predicted" income levels 4x what they are today. I think legalization is a good idea but I wish people would give things a couple years before drawing meaningful conclusions from the data.

rwl 12y ago

This sounds like a great outcome, and I support legalization for basically these reasons. More revenue for state governments, less violence, less law-enforcement time wasted on drug offences, and less crowding of prisons with non-violent drug offenders are all good things. But surely there have been downsides, too, even if they're not the ones that fear-mongerers predicted. Can anyone in Colorado speak to what those are?

tolas 12y ago
It's hard to decide which dispensary to go to? But seriously, I live and work in Downtown Denver and have seen no change for the worse, and frankly haven't heard any evidence that any of the assumed negative effects (ie: increase usage among teens and youth) have happened. Denver is one happy (and healthy) city. Legalization is a no brainer that is simply being held up nationwide due to outdated moral inertia.
akmiller 12y ago
I'm not in Colorado but I saw one of the downsides the other day which is the manufacture of items like candy bars with multiple serving sizes of THC in the one bar. People aren't paying much attention to the serving sizes and there appears to be no restrictions in place yet on how much can be in a given food item. I'm in favor of legalization but there may need to be some more restrictions in place on how much THC could be included in any one item.
- tolas 12y ago
  This is true. It takes responsibility on the users part and possibly more education on the sellers part. But certainly the same is true with alcohol, caffeine, etc. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/01/caffeine-overdose-prom-king/11863631/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/07/01/caf...
  - haswell 12y ago
    > One teaspoon of the powder contains up to 1,600 milligrams of caffeine — about 70 cans of Red Bull. Something is a bit off here.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

otoburb 12y ago
>Drugs are a person by person issue. Now you might say, yeah, if it wasn't x substance, it'd be y. Alcohol addiction comes to mind as another substitute that is depressing to watch or be the victim of. Does anybody know if marijuana side effects tend to induce violence or impaired decision making as compared to alcohol?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - tenementfunster 12y ago
    First, quit referring to it as "dope" since that is heroin, not marijuana. I suspect you know that but, for whatever reason, you've got a beef with people that don't have the iron skull you apparently have. I guess I'd like to know what you think about people on depression/anxiety/bipolar meds since you have such a strong opinion on what a makes up "clear head"?
    - narrowrail 12y ago
      My grandma, who was born in 1901, used to refer to any substance considered illegal as "dope." Of course, she had her 4oz hot-toddy every evening and smoked 2 packs per day. Most people that follow the mainstream view of controlled substances do not care about the nuances; drugs are bad (unless sold by big pharma).
    - bparsnips 12y ago
      I've never heard of dope referring to heroin, I think this is a US centric usage.
chucknelson 12y ago
You could attribute that to most things we observe as a society. Let us all reflect on the solitary anecdotes that fuel many technology arguments, especially iOS vs Android in recent years. "All of my friends says iOS sucks and have moved to Android!" "That can't be, all of my friends hated their Galaxy phones and moved to iPhone!"

danielweber 12y ago

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 47.1% drop. This is a very low quality article.

xyzzy123 12y ago
Agreed. I'm pro decriminalization and/or legalization, but a 52% drop in the murder rate due to the legalization of marijuana doesn't even pass the laugh test let alone the kind of analysis people are proposing here.
DatBear 12y ago
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 convictions. Also they stated that the crime rate in Denver is going down, yet the data shows the exact opposite. Whole article seems like cherrypicking at its finest.
- danielweber 12y ago
  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.
  - DatBear 12y ago
    Yea, I just read the article again and it seems more ridiculous than I thought at first glance.
12y ago

transfire 12y ago

I worry about what will happen when the next GOP President takes office. Will there be a sudden federal crackdown? If that happens then I think it is inevitable that the US will devolve into a tyranny --just as Plato said, all democracies ultimately do.

tolas 12y ago
I think it's pretty easy to argue that this is a states rights issue and should be left to the states. Nothing they could do would stop the momentum that we have in Colorado. Not to mention that'd you'd be putting tens of thousands of people out of a job if you tried to "crack down" on one of the fastest growing industries in the country (where it's legal). Job creators.
- jack-r-abbit 12y ago
  It is also pretty easy to argue that the feds need to just make it legal and then let the states go from there. Just like with alcohol where various states have slightly different rules but, for the most part, you can get booze just about where ever and when ever you want.
derwiki 12y ago
Could a new GOP president retroactively charge dispensary customers with illegal possession?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  It wouldn't be "retroactively" any more than all criminal prosecutions (which, in the absence of precrime legislation, necessarily address events in the past) are. Subject to the applicable statutes of limitations, as long as the federal laws are on the books, yes, people who committed offenses at a time when the those offenses were not prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch could be charged when the prosecutorial priorities of the executive branch change. That's sort of the key distinction between "prosecutorial priorities" and "laws".
- 12y ago

chipgap98 12y ago

> This November, it's all but certain that D.C. will vote on a marijuana ballot measure and even pass it, setting up a battle with Congress to legalize. It will be interesting to see what happens with this vote. The marijuana debate is in a completely different place than it was 16 years ago when Congress blocked the counting of the votes for medical marijuana in D.C., but I could still see them interfering with the vote again.

r00fus 12y ago
Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- bladegash 12y ago
  Yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_home_rule
  - ihnorton 12y ago
    Relatedly, the motto on D.C. license plates is "Taxation without representation": http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Washington,_D.C._license_plate.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Washingto...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Why would DC legalizing pot set up a battle with Congress - does Congress need to sign off on DC legislation? Yes, all DC Council legislation is subject to Congressional review before it becomes law. (Government of the capital district is a Congressional power under Article I of the Constitution.)

Throwaway1224 12y ago

the graff with the addiction rate vs. drug control spending is misleading. while the addiction rate is constant, the population is growing, meaning the total number of addicted people would be rising. graff graff.

k__ 12y ago
I thought the problem with drugs isn't the addiction but the black market. The people get addicted anyway, but now the money needed to cure them goes where it can help and not to the mob.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I suspect it will be like the lottery money that was supposedly destined for the public schools, and it will just turn into a slush fund the legislature and governor can spend as they please.
DatBear 12y ago
The total number of non-addicted people is also rising, by that logic, which is why % is in there...
kteofanidis 12y ago
It is misleading only in that the spending should have been per capita. I don't think that changes the point though which is that however much you spend it is just money wasted. As far as I am concerned money shouldn't be thrown away when the approach obviously isn't working no matter how much you think the goal is worth it. For the record I don't agree that the government should ban substances outright, just make sure they are labeled properly for the harm they do.

martin1b 12y ago

It's a long stretch to argue a decline in crime is attributed to drug use. Spin the numbers however you wish, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out the truth... If I were in law enforcement, I'd feel pretty slighted that drug users figured out how to take credit for some of my work.

gknoy 12y ago
Perhaps it's more related than you think: If pot is legal, police can spend their valuable time policing other things, and making a difference in those areas.
jessaustin 12y ago
The next time the police reduce broadly-based crime rates will be the first time. Demographics and environmental effects control this.

prostoalex 12y ago

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&a&utm_content=bufferc7b72&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer 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 accumulation (people who live in Colorado/Washington brag to their friends outside of those states) motivate the first purchases, you have to look at longer timeline to properly extrapolate the expected sales.

chenelson 12y ago
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?
- narrowrail 12y ago
  Currently, in CO, the legal retail prices are > than the black market was in the '90s. The black market is 50% of retail.
- eob 12y ago
  Both groups exist. Think of the "buying freedom" bump as the bump that happens when a new restaurant opens. A lot of people buying pot for the first time (or the first time in a long time) probably don't really care about pot that much. Not enough to break the law to buy it. It's just fun to try something new. Replacing "Pot" with "Norwegian Cuisine" is maybe a useful exercise. I'm in the group that doesn't care much about either (from the consumer standpoint). I wouldn't break the law to smoke pot, nor would I break the law to eat Norwegian food. But if either was suddenly legalized, of course I'd go try them out a few times, why not?
  - chenelson 12y ago

todd3834 12y ago

A few months ago, one of these discussions came up and someone presented some interesting data on negative effects this had on students and the drop out rate. Sorry I do not have a link to the discussion but I would love to see if someone had that data.

miles_matthias 12y ago

I live in Denver and work in Boulder, and honestly, I haven't noticed any change in people. The murder rate going down is awesome and having the state earn revenue is awesome, but the biggest misconception people have about Colorado right now (thanks to the media) is that it's a wild west of pot smoking lazy people stumbling around and acting up. But really, there's been no change in how people act. The people that have always smoked it (hippies in the park and normal people at home) are still smoking it, and the people that don't smoke (myself included) still don't smoke. So no lifestyle changes for the majority of the people in the state (except the people that get jobs now thanks to the legit industry and hopefully some lives saved by quality controlling the stuff) AND we get all the benefits. Let's go national with this thing.

toddsiegel 12y ago
Agreed. The press coverage has been over the top. To the average Coloradan it's been a non-event. Smokers kept smoking and non-smokers still don't. The only difference I notice is a small amount more of public smoking, but it could be my imagination.
julienchastang 12y ago
Long time Boulder resident here. In regards to change, the homeless/transient situation in downtown Boulder and beyond has gotten completely out of control [1]. I now see transients/homeless where I did not in the past. I am not certain the marijuana laws are the reason for so many transients coming to Boulder, but it could be a contributing factor. [1] http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_26064136/Boulder-councilman-merchants-warn-of-downtown http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_26064136/Boulder-councilm...
- chenelson 12y ago
  Of course you're seeing transients/homeless where you didn't in the past. The City Council is playing Whac-A-Mole: the police blocked off significant portions of the downtown library green areas and patrol the river. Where do you expect them to go? Besides, Boulder has been hostile to recreational marijuana. Denver had retail shops open on the 1st of January...it took until March or April for multiple shops to open. I doubt a couple months of legal weed has spiked the population. Boulder, like San Francisco and Seattle, has always had a significant homeless population. The big change I've seen in Boulder is Conservatism and intolerance. Take Patti Adler, for example.

panzagl 12y ago

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.

noddingham 12y ago

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.

munificent 12y ago

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/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOLjZx81LJ_SmKa-8bJEXz4GyA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1waFpYd7jK9nUcb1VbPOL... It's based on the raw data here: http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2012/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2012.pdf http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2013/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2013.pdf http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/20... http://www.denvergov.org/Portals/720/documents/statistics/2014/XCitywide_Reported_Offenses_2014.pdf 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?

lowmagnet 12y ago
The point in the article was unclear; I think they meant to say something more along the lines of "crime didn't go up by eleventy-thousand percent" rather than "crime went down".

chrisgd 12y ago

Once more data comes in, I would like to see crime and revenue compared with crime and revenue in areas that instead legalized casino gambling.

tzs 12y ago

> According to government data, the Denver city- and county-wide murder rate has dropped 52.9% since recreational marijuana use was legalized in January. This is compared to the same period last year, a time frame encompassing Jan. 1 through April 30. They need to also compare with demographically similar cities and counties that did not legalize marijuana. Crime is often heavily influenced by national or broad regional factors. You have to identify and account for this when trying to figure out how much of an affect a local factor (such as marijuana legalization in your state) had.