Washington and Colorado, have made it legal for recreational use, which is the ultimate

goal for groups trying to fully legalize weed. Colorado did this more than 8 months ago,

and the numbers are in so we can finally look at some of the effects of legalizing weed.

First off, let’s look at the givens.

Legalizing weed adds tax revenue; That’s obvious. Colorado expects a $98 million dollars

jump in tax revenue from weed sales this year alone. Legalizing weed also adds jobs. It’s

estimated by the Marijuana Industry Group that about 10,000 people now work in the weed

industry in Colorado, nearly 2,000 of which started in the first half of this year. Most

were already working in Colorado’s medical marijuana industry prior to 2014. And the

weed industry only accounts for about .04 percent of Colorado’s workforce. So, those

numbers shouldn’t be overblown, but sales are good and further job growth is expected.

Those are the things that we know for sure. They have a direct causal relationship to

the change in the law. But there are also things that we can’t directly tie to law.

These have a corollary relationship, but are still worth mentioning as they may allay some

fears.

Anti-legalization groups feared that legalizing recreational weed would lead to an increase

in driving fatalities. There is no direct evidence of that. In fact, the number of driving

fatalities were down in the first half of 2014. They also feared that there would be

an increase in hard drug use. Again, people are actually using less hard drugs now than

they were ten years ago. They feared that more high school aged kids would be smoking

weed. Again: no. And they feared that there would be a spike in violent crime and crime

in general. There hasn’t been. The crime rate is actually trending down.

So, does that mean that weed makes our highways, high schools and streets safer? No. Like I

said, there is no direct connection between legalizing recreational marijuana and any

of these statistics. We can’t prove causation, but we can show that since weed became legal,

things have not gotten worse.

So, are there any proven negatives to come out of these first 8 months?

Yes, sort of. Not really. There is some anecdotal evidence that the general public isn’t quite

ready for edible marijuana. One man ate edible marijuana and then shot his wife. Another

man ate edible marijuana and then fell off of a balcony. The police think that marijuana

played a role in both incidents. And the number of children who have been admitted to Children’s

Hospital of Colorado in Aurora due to consumption of marijuana in the first sixth months of

the year is already more than all of last year. Again, this evidence is largely anecdotal,

but it has been enough for the state to start looking at its THC limits and labeling requirements

for edible goods. On the whole, the experiment appears to be a success, but we won’t know

for sure until it has been in practice for many more years.