Skip to Content
Crime

RAND: Closing Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Causes Crime


Russian Kush does not cause crime

UPDATE 10/11/11: Pressure from the City Attorney's office has caused RAND to remove the study from their website.

The RAND corporation, a non-partisan rightwing think tank, has released a study today which shows that crime shot up over 60% in the three block radius around shuttered pot shops. From today's Daily News story:

RAND Corp. studied crime reports over the 10 days before and after June 7, 2010, when the city shuttered hundreds of pot shops. The Santa Monica-based think tank found that crime shot up 60 percent within three blocks of closed dispensaries as compared to those where dispensaries were allowed to remain open. "There's the common wisdom that dispensaries are crime magnets," said Mireille Jacobson, the study's lead author and a senior economist at RAND. "And this flies in the face of that."

"If medical marijuana dispensaries are causing crime, then there should be a drop in crime when they close," Jacobson said. "Individual dispensaries may attract crime or create a neighborhood nuisance, but we found no evidence that medical marijuana dispensaries in general cause crime to rise."

The City Attorney's office had a characteristically nonsensical reply:

"(Dispensaries) are a center for crime," said Detective Robert Holcomb of LAPD's Narcotics Enforcement Detail in the San Fernando Valley.

"Look at it from a criminal standpoint: Here is a location that you know contains narcotics, money so what better location to rob?"

By that logic, pharmacies and banks should be shut down immediately, as clearly they are magnets for crime! Also, we should definitely allow criminals to dictate what type of businesses are allowed to operate in our city, and not patients, caregivers and doctors.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from L.A. TACO

Tamal or Tamale? How to Correctly Pronounce the Singular Form of Tamales

The tamal vs. tamale debate has an almost emotional connection with people simply because it becomes a “how my family speaks the language vs. how it’s ‘supposed to be’ written” type of language conflict. In a culture like Mexico, where family always comes before anything, it makes sense that people will go with what feels familiar rather than what they are expected to say.

December 24, 2024

L.A.’s 13 Best Bars With Games and Activities

The best L.A. bars for axe-throwing, cumbia nights, playing pool, doing graffiti, smoking, playing pinball, and other fun, possibly delinquent activities.

December 23, 2024

Everything Wrong with Tesla’s $500 ‘Mezcal’

"Mezcal has become a commodity for many, without any regard for the earth, [or] for Indigenous people's land rights," says Odilia Romero, an Indigenous migrants rights advocate from Oaxaca and the executive director for CIELO. "Oaxaca is also having a water access issue.

December 20, 2024

This Weekend: Sonoran Caramelos, Brisket Tteokbokki, Mex-Italian Fusion, and Country-Fried Tofu

Plus, Malay-style wings, a collaboration pizza-topped with Philippe The Original's French-dipped beef and hot mustard, and more in this week's roundup.

December 20, 2024

More Than 70 People Reported Feeling Ill After Eating Oysters At L.A. Times ‘101 Restaurants’ Food Event

Ragusano is disappointed that the L.A. Times didn’t publicly disclose that there was an outbreak at their event. “Obviously they’re not going to print it in their paper,” Ragusano said. “But they‘re a newspaper and newspapers are supposed to share the news. This is how people usually find out about something like this,” she added. “It's ironic because it happened to them.”

December 19, 2024
See all posts