Impacts of Canada's cannabis legalization on police-reported crime among youth: early evidence

Addiction. 2021 Dec;116(12):3454-3462. doi: 10.1111/add.15535. Epub 2021 Jun 4.

Abstract

Aims: Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act allows youth (age 12-17 years) to possess up to 5 g of dried cannabis (or equivalent) for personal consumption/sharing. This study assessed whether the Cannabis Act was associated with changes in police-reported cannabis offences among youth in Canada.

Design: Time series model using national daily criminal incident data from January 1, 2015-December 31, 2018 from the Canadian Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR-2). Seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average time series models, stratified by sex, assessed the relations between legalization and youth cannabis-related offences.

Setting: Canada, 2015-2018.

Cases: Police-reported cannabis-related offenses among youth age 12-17 years (male, n = 32 178; female, n = 9001).

Measurements: Outcomes: police-reported cannabis-related crimes, property crimes, and violent crimes. Covariate: calendar-month.

Findings: For females, legalization was associated with a step-effect decrease of 4.56 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.32, 5.81; P < 0.001) police-reported cannabis-related criminal offences per day, an effect equivalent to a 64.6% (standard error [SE] = 33.5%) reduction. For males, legalization was associated with a drop of 12.73 (95% CI = 8.82, 16.64; P < 0.001) cannabis-related offences per day, equaling a decrease of 57.7% (SE = 22.6%). Results were inconclusive as to whether there were associations between cannabis legalization and patterns of property crimes or violent crimes.

Conclusions: Implementation of the Cannabis Act in Canada in 2018 appears to have been associated with decreases of 55%-65% in cannabis-related crimes among male and female youth.

Keywords: Canada; cannabis legalization; cannabis-related crime; police-reported crime; uniform crime reporting survey; youth.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Canada / epidemiology
  • Cannabis*
  • Child
  • Crime
  • Humans
  • Legislation, Drug
  • Police

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