Does legal weed make police more effective?

Freeing police from the burden of low-level marijuana enforcement would allow them to devote resources to more serious crimes
The Washington Post (US)
Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state has “produced some demonstrable and persistent benefit” to police departments' ability to solve other types of crime, according to researchers at Washington State University. “Our models show no negative effects of legalization and, instead, indicate that crime clearance rates for at least some types of crime are increasing faster in states that legalized than in those that did not,” the authors write in a study published in the journal Police Quarterly. Advocates for legalization have frequently argued that freeing police from the burden of low-level marijuana enforcement would allow them to devote resources to more serious crimes.