NO LINK BETWEEN POT, VIOLENT CRIMES FOUND

Smoking marijuana doesn't lead to violent crime, but it may lead to more
arrests of stoned criminals who engage in acts of violence, two economists say.

Rosalie Liccardo Pacula of Rand and Harvard University graduate student
Beau Kilmer found that criminals under the influence of marijuana were more
likely to get caught, thought pot smokers apparently were no more likely to
commit a violent crime in the first place. (But watch out for alcohol
abusers, Pacula said: People under the influence of booze were more likely
to commit violent crimes than people who hadn't been drinking).

Pacula and Kilmer also found a positive correlation between marijuana use
and arrests for property and other "income producing" offenses such as
robbery and prostitution, which could either be explained by the notion
that people are more likely to commit nonviolent crimes under the influence
or, again, because they are more likely to be get arrested, Pacula said.

Their findings were based on a detailed analysis of national survey data
collected from arrestees and FBI crime reports. The results appear in a
working paper published this week by the National Bureau of Economic Research.