@article{ref1,
title="Canada's cannabis legalization and adult crime patterns, 2015-2021: a time series study",
journal="Addictive behaviors",
year="2023",
author="Callaghan, Russell C. and Sanches, Marcos and Hathaway, Andrew and Asbridge, Mark and Kish, Stephen J.",
volume="146",
number="",
pages="e107813-e107813",
abstract="BACKGROUND AND AIM: A central goal of the Cannabis Act (October 17, 2018) - Canada's national cannabis legalization framework - aimed to reduce cannabis-related criminalization and consequent impact on the Canadian criminal justice system. We assessed whether Canada's cannabis legalization was associated with changes in adult police-reported cannabis-related, property, or violent criminal incidents. <br><br>DESIGN: 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). PRIMARY SAMPLE: National police-reported adult cannabis-related offenses (n = 247,249), property crimes (n = 2,299,777), and violent crimes (n = 1,903,762). <br><br>FINDINGS: Implementation of the Cannabis Act was associated with decreases in adult police-reported cannabis-related offenses: females, -13.2 daily incidents (95% CI, -16.4; -10.1; p < 0.001) - a reduction of 73.9% [standard error (se), 30.6%]; males, -69.4 daily offenses (95% CI, -81.5; -57.2; p < 0.001) - a drop of 83.2% (se, 21.2%). Legalization was not associated with significant changes in the adult property-crime or violent-crime series. <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: 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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0306-4603",
doi="10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107813",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107813"
}