Alex Berenson on cannabis: what the evidence says · JRE #1246
SUBJECT: CANNABIS
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
2013 oregon washington colorado alaska There are 450 murders in those four states. There are 30,000 ag assaults, period. 2017, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Alaska. There are 620 murders in those four states. That's an almost 40% increase.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Critics did not dispute Berenson's underlying murder counts for Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington between 2013 and 2017, but found the causal inference unsupported. PolitiFact reported that Berenson's four-state comparison cherry-picks dates, since Colorado and Washington legalized in 2012 (not 2014, as Berenson has stated elsewhere), and it coincides with a national homicide uptick in 2015; it also relies on raw counts rather than population-adjusted rates. University of Oregon economist Benjamin Hansen built synthetic-control models comparing Colorado and Washington to statistically similar non-legal states and found actual homicide rates were at or below what pre-legalization (2000-2012) trends predicted, implying no demonstrated legalization effect. A 2023 systematic review of comparative longitudinal studies likewise found no significant difference in violent crime between Colorado/Washington and matched comparison states from 1999-2016, while noting that rigorous studies isolating crime effects (as opposed to possession-arrest data) remain scarce and results across the broader literature are inconsistent. Overall, the specific 40% figure is not a fabrication, but using it to demonstrate a legalization-crime causal link is misleading given the absence of population/rate adjustment and the contrary findings of controlled analyses.