A study
conducted by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice aided the growing amount
of evidence that legalization or decriminalization of marijuana does not lead
to rampant drug abuse and have suggested some interesting and positive trends. Since decriminalization went into full effect on January
1, 2011, the study found that decriminalization “has not resulted in harmful
consequences for teenagers, such as increased crime, drug overdose, driving
under the influence or school dropout” (Ingraham, Washington Post). The study
actually concludes that California teenagers showed improvements in all of
these areas. The most notable numbers are the drop out rates, arrests, and drug
overdose deaths. This would suggest that the government would be saving money as they would need to focus less resources on marijuana related crimes. Also, many opponents have suggested that higher marijuana use leads
to greater drop out rates. However, drop out rates have fallen by 22% so the
government should keep a watchful eye these trends.
On top of
this, there has been very little evidence of increased social harm in states
where marijuana has been decriminalized. While more people have had marijuana detected
in their blood, it can be attributed to the fact that marijuana can stay in the
system for up to a month among heavier users. Despite this fact, traffic
fatalities have fallen quite a bit as marijuana is much safer to drive on than
alcohol. This was a trend observed in Colorado as well. We can clearly observe
that there has been some positive trends since the decriminalization of
marijuana in California and the legalization of marijuana in Colorado. It
should be very interesting to see if other states follow suit as a more
definitive trend is displayed over a longer period of time.
Jason Chiu
No comments:
Post a Comment