In 2013, Little Rock, Arkansas received a dubious distinction: on a list of the \u201cMost Dangerous Cities in America,\u201d the state\u2019s capital and most\u00a0populous city was on top, the riskiest place in the United States.<\/p>\n
Why is this? What causes the \u201cdeviant behavior\u201d that our laws have classified as \u201ccrime\u201d?\u00a0If you listen to criminologists, whose job it is to figure this out, theories for the root causes of crime are so complex and so hotly debated<\/a>\u00a0that a good rule of thumb has emerged: If a cause is simple and easy to explain, it is almost certainly wrong.<\/p>\n Keep this in mind when you digest this recent news from Arkansas, where police chiefs and other leaders in law enforcement are blaming a perceived increase in crime on attitudes\u2014specifically, a \u201clax attitude towards marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n In November 2016, a few years after Little Rock\u2019s slide into criminal purgatory Arkansas voters legalized medical marijuana. Their attitude is consistent with other voters across America:\u00a0According to a 2017 poll conducted by Gallup<\/a>, 64 percent of Americans believe cannabis should be legalized outright.<\/p>\n Mike Davis is chief of police of North Little Rock, a majority white city just north across the Arkansas River from the capital. In a recent interview with CBS affiliate THV-11, Davis, who spent much of his 30-plus-years in law enforcement on drug and gang task forces, suggested that an unspecified \u201cincrease\u201d in crime was related to this attitudinal shift.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started really noticing that increase because several of our homicides this year kind of had ties to the marijuana trade,\u201d Davis told the station.<\/p>\n Among the crimes that, according to Davis, \u201chappen as a result\u201d of marijuana: \u201ccar break-ins, house break-ins, commercial burglaries, shootings, robberies, and homicides.\u201d<\/p>\n Another local law enforcement leader dug further into this theory, that, in the TV station\u2019s words, a \u201clax attitude about marijuana has emboldened criminals, leaving behind deadly consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n As per THV-11:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always had crime related to marijuana, I mean that\u2019s always been the case,\u201d said Kevin Russell, a captain with Benton police. \u201cI looked for cases involving marijuana just in the city since June 1, and it was 28 incidents, where it was somehow related in some shape, form, or fashion. That just seems like such an extremely high number that we\u2019ve seen in a very short period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n There are a few problems with this theory, starting with the complete lack of any evidence to support it \u2014\u00a0and data that has led criminologists to conclude that legalization may actually trigger a drop in crime.<\/a><\/p>\n According to the FBI\u2019s annual Uniform Crime Report, the same data that allowed Little Rock to be declared a lawless cesspool, Arkansas has a crime rate nearly 10 percent higher than\u00a0California<\/a>, a place with very lax attitudes indeed towards the drug.<\/p>\n Granted, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. There are two cities in California with more residents than live in all of Arkansas, which is not nearly as large or as varied geographically.<\/p>\n However, given that Californians have had a \u201clax attitude\u201d on cannabis since at least the\u00a01990s, when voters there legalized medical marijuana, it would suggest that there is at least one notable exception to Davis\u2019s theory.<\/p>\n But there are more. In fact, there are exceptions almost everywhere you look.\u00a0According to a study published in The Economic Journal,<\/a>\u00a0the \u201clax attitudes\u201d that manifest into marijuana legalization laws reduce drug cartel activity so significantly that violent crime drops by 13 percent on average where the drug is legal.<\/p>\n In Little Rock itself,\u00a0police arrested 702 people for marijuana possession in 2016 \u2014 up from 285 in 2012,<\/a>\u00a0around when the city earned its title as America\u2019s most dangerous.<\/p>\n Earlier this summer, city lawmakers there rejected a proposal that would have decriminalized marijuana possession \u2014 in part because, according to police chief Kenton Buckner, cops there already treat cannabis possession more lightly than other crimes.<\/p>\n Applying Davis\u2019s theory, this should be no surprise in America\u2019s most dangerous town. But a few years after topping that unfortunate list, when the more laissez-faire attitudes were developing, another listicle pegged Little Rock as only the country\u2019s ninth-most dangerous city.<\/p>\n It\u2019s almost as if when police leaders like Mike Davis and Bentonville, Arkansas police Capt. Kevin Russell blame \u201clax attitudes on marijuana\u201d for a rise in crime, they are completely full of it.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think medical marijuana has anything to do with an increase in crime?<\/p>\n The post Arkansas Police: Medical Marijuana Causes Other Crimes<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In 2013, Little Rock, Arkansas received a dubious distinction: on a list of the \u201cMost Dangerous Cities in America,\u201d the state\u2019s capital and most\u00a0populous city was on top, the riskiest place in the United States. Why is this? What causes the \u201cdeviant behavior\u201d that our laws have classified as \u201ccrime\u201d?\u00a0IfContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1008,148,50,1446,1652,53,139,5315],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28418,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28417\/revisions\/28418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Arkansas Police: Medical Marijuana Causes Other Crimes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"