SAM releases “short report” stressing perceived harms from legalization in Colorado and Washington

The leading anti-marijuana reform group, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), today released this brief report titled “Lessons After Two Years of Marijuana Legalization – Short Report.” According to this press release, SAM believe that the “report outlines both what data we know – and what we need to know – to accurately evaluate the consequences of marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado.”

Unfortunately, the report is not anywhere close to a review of relevant data about legalization and it is entirely focused on stressing what SAM thinks is evidence of problems since legalization.  For example, here is some of what appears in a section under the heading “DENVER CITY AND COUNTY CRIME IS UP”:

In the city and county of Denver, overall crime is slightly higher through November 2014 than it was during that same time period in 2013. Most crime categories are up, like simple assault and criminal mischief; but some categories show reductions, like sex offenses, kidnapping, and motor vehicle theft….  It’s possible that crime statistics have little to do with marijuana law changes, but rampant media reports of “legalization linked with a crime drop” are unsubstantiated.

Most critically, the report say nothing about the metrics and factors stressed by those who push for marijuana reform such as (1) avoiding harms/costs that result from (racially skewed) arrests and enforcement of low-level marijuana criminal laws, (2) generating revenues from marijuana taxes, licenses and fees (3) allowing police to focus on more serious crimes, and (4) increasing monies available for drug prevention and addiction programs, (5) creating jobs/incomes from a new regulated legal industry and taking jobs/monies away from drug cartels and gangs involved in the black market.

In addition, though the title of this short report promises to provide “Lessons” from legalization, I struggled to draw any lessons from this report (other than that SAM is mostly interested in trumping up existing data to claim legalization is problematic when the extant evidence is anything but clear).  That all said, this report merits credit for noting and lamenting that “no robust public tracking system by federal or state authorities has been implemented” and for noting that “more sophisticated data are sorely lacking with respect to marijuana in Colorado and Washington.”