The Cannabis Influence on Crime in Colorado
It was on September 6th, 2012 that the State of Colorado voted to legalize cannabis. At the time, Colorado was one of the very first states in the country to pass this into law, and the topic was rich with controversy and fear. One of the bigger concerns which has been revolving around drugs since drugs existed is how drugs and crime coexist and seemingly stick together. With more drugs it would seem that more crime would follow. This is the case in many cities across the nation, but those drugs are illegal and the density at which they impact the community is at a much smaller scale than the entire state legalization of a federally controlled substance. With the opportunity to purchase the drug legally, maybe this would help decrease the amount of crime involved with such matters. Many people were concerned about the risk of increased crime with the legalization of cannabis in Colorado, but alias it has been 10 years and we now have the data to show the real story of how cannabis has influenced crime across the state.
When comparing crime rates with cannabis revenue, it is important to consider that there may be other outside factors that influenced the crime rate and this is not a direct correlation, rather an insight into whether there was an observable obvious impact on our communities across the state. Now, notable information to consider are that Denver County and El Paso County are the top two cannabis revenue powerhouses in the state. They are so far apart from the rest of the counties in their total revenue, almost a 60%-80% increase in overall revenue compared to the other counties, so the crime rates associated with these counties will be the most influential. Denver and El Paso are both major counties in the state, making up the majority of the population, which influenced the strength of our correlations. After comparing the highest crime counties over the last 10 years, which are Pueblo County with 662.9 crimes per 100k people and Denver County with 659.9 crimes per 100k people, and the counties with the highest recorded crime rates, we can see that the revenue for cannabis is well below the average compared to other counties at the same time. This tells us that crime is happening at higher rates across the state without the influence of cannabis.
The same correlation can be seen when comparing the highest revenue producing counties across the state over the last 10 years. The top three highest months for revenue per county were all in Denver county and counted only 5598, 5835, and 5838 crimes during those three months across the 10 years. Now compare that data to the counties with the highest crime rates as well as the lowest crime rates. These numbers lie within the average number of crimes committed per month for the county, which means they are not outstanding or influenced by the sale of cannabis. Going back to investigating the highest crime producing counties, we can now see that even though Denver county is ranked at number two for the highest crime rate per 100k people, the crime rates are normal during months which produce the most revenue by means of cannabis sales. When comparing that data to highest crime rates, we can see that there is absolutely no correlation between the amount of cannabis sold and the rate of crime in the county.
Overall, the results conclude that the legalization of cannabis in the state of Colorado did not have an overall impact, positively or negatively on the crime rate. The counties with the highest crime and highest revenue of cannabis sales had no correlation when looking at the data from month to month. There are other factors that impact the results of the data, which include our top crime performing counties and revenue from cannabis sales also having the largest populations in the state. Counties with no data collected either from crime or cannabis also played a small part in influencing the results, but nothing to change the final outcome which is cannabis does not influence crime and vis versa in the state of Colorado.
