Does Legal Weed Increase Homelessness? – News

law enforcement and Institute of Cannabis Research, an interdisciplinary program established last year. The primary author, sociology professor and Tim McGettigan, worked closely with 30 other PhDs and Pueblo County officials to compile data on the area’s homeless population.

The study’s conclusion: “Apart from anecdotal reports, we did not find definitive evidence that links increased homelessness to legal cannabis. ” Rather, “the major factors leading to homelessness are a lack of affordable housing, inability to find work, and family crises. “

Local law enforcement disagreed. Pueblo Police Chief Troy Davenport offered his own anecdote a day after the CSU-Pueblo’s findings were delivered to Pueblo’s county commissioners. ” come to either extensively get jobs in the marijuana field or, as it ends up, most of the time to just get marijuana,” he said. “There’s clearly a relationship between homelessness in Colorado and access to marijuana,” he told KRDO, “and I think that would account for the fact that Colorado for the most part, and Washington state, have higher-than-average homelessness. The epidemic has gotten so bad that Pueblo County is considering