Oh, Weed Spots Don't Actually Reduce Crime
What if I told you that having a medical marijuana dispensary near you could actually reduce crime in your neighborhood? You'd probably be like "duuuude," or some other stereotypically "stoner" thing, because your "glaucoma treatment" has been particularly good lately. Well, snap out of it, man: I'm here to tell you that a medical marijuana dispensary does not reduce crime in your neighborhood after all!
You see, the respected Rand Corporation did a big study of crime data and put out a fancy report last month saying that hey, these weed stores sure do bring down crime! It's probably all the surveillance cameras they have, was the theory, although of course the real reason would have been the marijuana smokers all having the "munchies" too much to do crime—hey, why do crime when there are Chips Ahoy! brand cookies to be eaten while intoxicated on the THC found in marijuana, am I right? You're welcome, Rand Corporation, for this humorous—but not without an element of truth—insight.
The point is, that report was all messed up. The Rand people forgot to include crime data from the LAPD. That's a lot of crime data!
The Rand researchers relied on data posted by CrimeReports.com, which they mistakenly believed included LAPD data. Knopman said Rand was not blaming the website. She said Rand reviewers, digging deeply into the data, only recently discovered that it did not include LAPD reports.
Well well, what do you know, "stoner" marijuana apologists try to throw together a report using whatever they could find on the internet, only to find out that their data was incomplete, likely because Rand researchers were too overcome with the intoxicating effects of the THC found in marijuana to properly focus on their work! Just joshing you, Rand Corporation. Seriously everyone, we could all stand around making jokes about marijuana on the internet all day, but let's just remember that medical marijuana leads to crime and move on with our lives—we need to go smoke more marijuana!
We don't really. But the Rand Corporation researchers probably do, to "come down" from this bummer! We're joking, that would be defamatory. Not that there's anything wrong with smoking marijuana—we love it! We really don't.
