Politics & Government
RAND Withdraws Medical Marijuana Study
The Sept. 22 study argued that crime increases in neighborhoods where medical pot facilities are shut down.
RAND Corporation has withdrawn from its website a study that it released late last month about government regulation of medical marijuana facilities and its effect on crime.
Titled “Regulating Medical Marijuana Dispensaries: An Overview with Preliminary Evidence of Their Impact on Crime,” the study has been “withdrawn pending further review,” according to the RAND website.
, compared to neighborhoods where the facilities are allowed to remain open.
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Study Criticized
A Los Angeles Times blog reported Tuesday that the decision by the Santa Monica-based think tank comes nearly three weeks after the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office criticized the study’s assumptions and counterintuitive conclusions, demanding its immediate retraction.
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Describing its study as “the first systematic analysis of the claim that marijuana dispensaries are linked to crime,” the study examined crime statistics for a 10-day period before and after
June 7, 2010, when Los Angeles ordered the closure of more than 70 percent of the 638 medical marijuana dispensaries in the city at the time, partly because of their presumed connection to crime.
The RAND study found that crime increased by an average of 59 percent within three-tenths of a mile of a medical pot dispensary that had been closed, compared to one that was open.
In a letter to RAND on the eve of the study’s publication, however, the City Attorney’s office argued that to the best of its knowledge there’s no evidence whether most of the dispensaries ordered closed did in fact shut down on June 7, 2010, and that they remained closed for 10 days, according to the Times.
“To our knowledge, no comprehensive effort was ever made by anyone, including Rand, to track and record the [dispensaries’] precise openings and closings,” the letter from the City Attorney’s office reportedly said, adding: “We were also terribly troubled by your suggestion that a 10-day period of statistical review constitutes a relevant crime trend.”
The letter further described the RAND study’s conclusions as "highly suspect and unreliable," based on "faulty assumptions, conjecture, irrelevant data, untested measurements and incomplete results."
RAND's Retraction Coincides With Federal Crackdown
The study’s retraction comes just days after the U.S. Department of Justice launched a crackdown last week on California’s medical marijuana collectives and the owners of properties where the collectives are based.
The federal enforcement includes the .
NoHo Caregivers had received two closure letters from the City Attorney’s office—in May 2010 and roughly a year thereafter—Special Assistant City Attorney Jane Usher told Eagle Rock Patch Tuesday. revolving around the purchase of marijuana from the facility.
“So we were gratified that the Department of Justice’s effort included a prosecution of individuals in [the NoHo Caregivers] collective,” said Usher, who was one of two City attorneys who wrote the letter to RAND, criticizing its study.
Usher said she was not at liberty to say if the federal government was prosecuting other medical marijuana collectives in Los Angeles or Southern California. “There wouldn’t be any publicly available information unless and until the federal government takes public action,” she said.
What’s Next For Enforcement in L.A.?
Last Friday, , who helped draft a medical marijuana ordinance that has been challenged in the court of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony J. Mohr, requested the City Attorney’s office to advise the City Council about the legal implications of the federal crackdown on state marijuana collectives.
The crackdown comes close on the heels of a recent ruling by the California Court of Appeal for the Second District in the case of “Pack vs. City of Long Beach,” which allows cities to restrict and limit the actions of medical marijuana collectives but not to authorize, advance or permit them.
Cities covered by the Second Appellate District, which includes Los Angeles, will have to consider how to adopt prohibitory ordinances that adhere to the ruling in the Pack case, Usher said, adding: “If you keep a watch, I anticipate a number of cities enacting a ban on collectives in order to be consistent with the Pack ruling,” which becomes final next month unless the City of Long Beach appeals it.
“As is now painfully clear to anyone, this area of the law is evolving and the ideas being put forward were familiar to our City Council during its initial round of hearings two years ago,” Usher said, adding: “But now the chickens are coming home to roost—these are not merely legal theories and concepts, they are the law of the land in Los Angeles County.”
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