Original research
by
Callaghan, Russell C. et al
Release Date
2023
Geography
Canada
Language of Resource
English
Full Text Available
No
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
No
Peer Reviewed
Yes
Objective
We assessed whether Canada’s cannabis legalization was associated with changes in adult police-reported cannabis-related, property, or violent criminal incidents.
Findings/Key points
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.
Design/methods
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)
Keywords
Crime
Decriminalization/legalization
Policy/Regulatory
Legal system/law enforcement
