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Comment by curiousgeorgio | Hacker News Reader

> I'm curious to learn why you oppose legalization

For starters, a 20% increase in violent crime and significant increases in hospitalizations[1] directly related to marijuana use are two concrete examples. There are many more less-direct negative effects (e.g., insurance rates increasing for everyone due to marijuana-related accidents/injury) that probably aren't immediately reflected in public data, but are still detrimental to society.

[1] https://cdpsdocs.state.co.us/ors/docs/reports/2018-SB13-283_...

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Not sure where you're seeing a 20% increase in violent crime in this data, but per page 160 of this, violent offense rates per 100,000 population are pretty stable from 2008-2016, with a tick up in 2017. That may or may not be related to legalization, since AFAIK Nebraska didn't legalize anything lately and they also had a tick up in violent crime in 2017 [0].

[0] https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/state/nebr...

This is a very interesting document, but where does it discuss a 20% increase in violent crime? I read the section about organized crime involved with cultivation and assume that bring some violent elements.

While this is an ostensibly neutral collection of data, it reads to me very favorably about effects of legalization. Surprisingly even vehicle fatalities decreased significantly over the measured time period.

Page 160, direct quote:

"violent crime increased 20% from 2012 to 2017"

If you graph the data presented in table 46, the increasing trend – specifically in violent crime since 2012 – becomes very clear.

Alabama saw a similar increase in violent crime in the same period, sans legalization. I'm not seeing any evidence that this is more than a spurious correlation.

I'm also not seeing any significant increase in insurance rates after my state ended prohibition, and the traffic fatalities and collisions haven't been significantly impacted.

What explanation do you propose for why cannabis legalization would lead to an increase in violent crime?

Our auto insurance rates went up significantly in Illinois recently, likely correlated with legalization.

Anecdotally, the people I know who use marijuana drive high regularly and don’t think that doing so is dangerous, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I think it's reasonable to ask if the people are the same. Who has moved into or out of Colorado? I've heard that initially, large numbers of marijuana users moved to Colorado. They may have different average behavior than the previous population of Colorado, with or without marijuana of any legality.

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