Arizona is facing a choice on the ballot as to whether marijuana should be legalized for recreation purposes. Citizens in the neighboring state of Colorado made the decision to legalize in 2012 and provides an opportunity to look at the outcomes of their decision.
In Colorado, marijuana has become a $1.3 billion dollar industry with taxes to the state totaling upwards to $170 million. Those funds go primarily toward education, to teach youth about the potential risks of drugs and adults how to handle the now legal drug. The funds also go toward capital school construction, addressing homelessness and college scholarships.
One of the greatest concerns is how legalization would affect access of the drug to children. Colorado conducts a Healthy Kids Colorado Survey every two years to look at trends in drug and alcohol use among young people, and it provides some insight. In 2015, 17,000 middle and high school students took part in the anonymous survey and the results show that the legalization of marijuana has not had a significant impact on marijuana use among that age group.
The national average for middle and high school kids who use marijuana was 21.7 percent, while in Colorado it is 21.2 percent, up from 19.7 percent in 2013. Of that number, 47 percent got the marijuana from someone they knew and 32 percent from some other source. Only nine percent obtained marijuana from someone with a medical marijuana card.
The figures show that in 2009, 43 percent of Colorado youth used marijuana at least once, a figure that dropped to 38 percent in 2015. The report notes that although use was lower in 2013 than previous years, the estimates are within the margin of error and do not represent a statistically significant decrease between 2005 and 2013.
It was also noted in the report that in reality, it is too soon to determine the effects of marijuana legalization among teenagers and that it could, in fact, take decades.
Another concern is an increase in crime. State and law enforcement officials in Colorado feared that legalization would lead to a huge increase in criminal behavior. Others predicted that the elimination of arrests for marijuana would bring a huge savings for police and the justice system. According to information provided in a report by the Police Foundation and the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police entitled Colorado’s Legalization of Marijuana and the Impact on Public Safety: A Practical Guide for Law Enforcement, to date, these predictions have not been borne out.
The report explains that it is still too early to tell what effect legalized marijuana will have on crime and public safety overall. Nonetheless, Colorado law enforcement officials have observed some concerning trends in drug use, most notably with youth and young adults. Law enforcement officials also say they are spending increased amounts of time and funds on the challenges of enforcing the new laws surrounding legal marijuana.
Some of the concerns facing law enforcement have been to balance critical issues such as opposing state and federal marijuana laws, illegal trafficking of Colorado marijuana across state lines, ensuring public safety of growing operations and extraction businesses in residential areas.
For law enforcement, the legislation to enact the new laws has been vague, and consequently difficult to enforce. Unforeseen problems have arisen, ranging from how to determine when a driver is legally under the influence of marijuana to how to deal with legal drug refining operations in residential neighborhoods.
Adding to the issues is an increase in traffic in the state as more people travel and move to Colorado to take part in the use of legalized marijuana, skewing statistics pertaining to increased automobile accidents compared to previous years.
For more information on the effects of legalization, go online to www.nccpsafety.org/ for the full law enforcement report and to www.chd.dphe.state.co.us/ for the full report on the effects on children.
