The Colorado Springs Police Department has released data revealing the number of local homicides linked by a so-called “marijuana nexus” during the past three years, with the 2016 numbers showing that weed was a factor in more than a third of the killings. However, a spokesperson for the CSPD insists that the release of these figures doesn’t represent a departmental position on the issue, and says the numbers were released following a barrage of requests from news organizations apparently looking for bombshell evidence that marijuana has played a big role in boosting the Springs murder rate.
Even before Coloradans voted in favor of legalizing limited recreational marijuana sales in November 2012, the debate over the alleged connection between cannabis and crime has raged across the state. Some studies have undermined this theory, while others have been less conclusive — and non-scientific reports from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a law enforcement group, have regularly suggested that the sky is falling.
Against this backdrop, the CSPD compiled information about “Colorado Springs homicide case characteristics involving a marijuana nexus for 2015, 2016 and 2017.”
Here are the numbers: