Hello, guys.

I'm going to close out our presentation by talking a little bit about the
relationship between marijuana... and CRIME.
This has traditionally been a hotly disputed topic when it comes to the marijuana
legalization debate, and with good reason. Any illegal substance is always closely
followed by other illegal activities, both in the form of crimes related to distributing and
acquiring said substance, and crimes that occur as a result of people using the drug.
Marijuana is no exception to this rule, and statistically someone in America gets
arrested on a marijuana related charge every 36 seconds. But the real question is are
these crimes caused by people using marijuana? Or are these crimes the direct result of
the illegality of marijuana itself?
On a purely superficial level, that is an easy question to answer. I would guess that at
least half of you here in this classroom have tried smoking weed at some point. I don't
want to sound like a hysterical pothead weed advocate (you know, one of those
stereotypical "weed is good for you, the government only bans it to keep us down,
man." types) but I think that anyone who has actually smoked weed would agree that
getting high makes it more difficult to commit crimes of any sort. You never hear about
people who smoked so much weed that they decided to kill someone, or rob a liquor
store, or anything like; alcohol, on the other hand, has a tons of data correlating it to
things like domestic violence and robbery, yet it's legal and, indeed, prevalent just
about everywhere in the world and our society has yet to collapse.
All of this seems suggest that marijuana does not directly cause any crime, and the
good news for the pro-weed crowd is that, so far, empirical data gathered by whoever it
is that gathers this sort of data seems to back mostly this assertion up. As I'm sure
everyone knows, Marijuana was legalized in two states on November 6th of 2012. This
has essentially given us a guinea pig for weed legalization in the United States, and so
far the results have been promising. A study conducted by the Colorado Department of
Public Safety reveals that in Denver, violent crime has gone down across the board.
Homicides are down a whopping 42%, and robberies are down by nearly 10%. Property
crime experienced less drastic changes, but were reduced overall. This data itself is
quite new, but the results and implications are not. In 2001, a government sponsored
study comparing crime rates in states that decriminalized marijuana vs. those that
hadn't revealed no significant differences in crime rates over a period of time. Overall,
this is little evidence to say that pot directly causes a significant crime problem, at least
on a state level.
Now, in addition to the effects of marijuana legalization, it is also important to take into
account the consequences of marijuana prohibition. The single most compelling and
commonly used argument against prohibition is that enforcement of marijuana laws
allows criminals to take over marijuana trafficking, which then leads to an increase in
other, more violent crimes. Harvard economist Jeff Miron estimates that ending
marijuana prohibition and instead regulating and taxing it's sale would generate as
much as 14 billion dollars between the reduced government spending on enforcement
and the increased tax revenues. Just the enforcement of marijuana laws is estimated to
cost taxpayers 7.5 billion dollars every year, which no matter how you feel about
marijuana, is probably a disproportionate expenditure. In fact, the mere act of
decriminalizing marijuana in 1976 is estimated to have saved California an average of
100 million dollars a year. The money saved could easily be used for a number of other
causes, such as fighting other, more violent criminals, or social efforts like bolstering our
education system (which would indirectly reduce crime, and perhaps even marijuana
usage. Win-win.)
Prohibition impacts the end user as well, since without government regulation you have
only your dealer's word on what you are getting, meaning that there is no guarantee that
the weed you buy isn't contaminated with insecticides or infected with molds and
bacteria. Being forced to buy from criminals also increases the risk of being exposed to
the delicious variety of other drugs that you can abuse. Marijuana is often cited as a
gateway drug, but it is in fact our laws that make it that way; if we could buy marijuana
from licensed retailers, we never have to come into contact with drug dealers, some of
which are possibly using and selling other drugs. While it is true that, at the moment,
black market pot is cheaper than the legal stuff, if marijuana legalization spreads then
we can expect those prices to start dropping, eventually pushing black market growers
out of the market.
All of this is on top of that fact that, sadly, marijuana prohibition just doesn't seem to be
very effective. Approximately a third of the people living in the United States have tried
marijuana, and there are an estimated 15 million regular users. An ongoing
government-funded study at the University of Michigan found that, despite decades of
the nationwide war on drugs, every year 85% or more of high school students report
that marijuana is very easy for them or their peers to obtain. Remember, we are
spending an average of 7.5 billion dollars to fight marijuana distribution, and yet even
teenagers have little trouble obtaining it.
This information, {combined with the information provided by my colleagues} inevitably
leads to one conclusion: marijuana prohibition is most likely a doomed project. No
matter which side of the fence you are on, it is impossible to deny that the marijuana
portion of the war on drugs is both costly and ineffective. Public support for marijuana
prohibition is crumbling. Whatever we decide though, we need to remember that the
rest of the world is watching.