Canada's cannabis legalization and adult crime patterns, 2015-2021: A time series study.
Adults
Canada
Cannabis legalization
Crime
Criminal justice system
Journal
Addictive behaviors
ISSN: 1873-6327
Titre abrégé: Addict Behav
Pays: England
ID NLM: 7603486
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
11 2023
11 2023
Historique:
received:
24
05
2023
revised:
17
07
2023
accepted:
22
07
2023
medline:
7
8
2023
pubmed:
30
7
2023
entrez:
29
7
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
A central goal of the Cannabis Act (October 17, 2018) - Canada's national cannabis legalization framework - aimed to reduce cannabis-related criminalization and consequent impact on the Canadian criminal justice system. We assessed whether Canada's cannabis legalization was associated with changes in adult police-reported cannabis-related, property, or violent criminal incidents. Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models evaluated relations between legalization and adult cannabis-related, property, and violent crimes, using criminal incident data from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2; January 1, 2015-December 31, 2021). National police-reported adult cannabis-related offenses (n = 247,249), property crimes (n = 2,299,777), and violent crimes (n = 1,903,762). Implementation of the Cannabis Act was associated with decreases in adult police-reported cannabis-related offenses: females, -13.2 daily incidents (95% CI, -16.4; -10.1; p < 0.001) - a reduction of 73.9% [standard error (se), 30.6%]; males, -69.4 daily offenses (95% CI, -81.5; -57.2; p < 0.001) - a drop of 83.2% (se, 21.2%). Legalization was not associated with significant changes in the adult property-crime or violent-crime series. Our findings suggest that Canada's cannabis legalization was successful in reducing cannabis-related criminalization among adults. There was also a lack of evidence for spillover effects of cannabis legalization on adult property or violent crimes.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND AND AIM
A central goal of the Cannabis Act (October 17, 2018) - Canada's national cannabis legalization framework - aimed to reduce cannabis-related criminalization and consequent impact on the Canadian criminal justice system. We assessed whether Canada's cannabis legalization was associated with changes in adult police-reported cannabis-related, property, or violent criminal incidents.
DESIGN
Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) time series models evaluated relations between legalization and adult cannabis-related, property, and violent crimes, using criminal incident data from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2; January 1, 2015-December 31, 2021).
PRIMARY SAMPLE
National police-reported adult cannabis-related offenses (n = 247,249), property crimes (n = 2,299,777), and violent crimes (n = 1,903,762).
FINDINGS
Implementation of the Cannabis Act was associated with decreases in adult police-reported cannabis-related offenses: females, -13.2 daily incidents (95% CI, -16.4; -10.1; p < 0.001) - a reduction of 73.9% [standard error (se), 30.6%]; males, -69.4 daily offenses (95% CI, -81.5; -57.2; p < 0.001) - a drop of 83.2% (se, 21.2%). Legalization was not associated with significant changes in the adult property-crime or violent-crime series.
CONCLUSIONS
Our findings suggest that Canada's cannabis legalization was successful in reducing cannabis-related criminalization among adults. There was also a lack of evidence for spillover effects of cannabis legalization on adult property or violent crimes.
Identifiants
pubmed: 37515896
pii: S0306-4603(23)00208-3
doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107813
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
107813Subventions
Organisme : CIHR
ID : PJT 180292
Pays : Canada
Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.