Indopedia All Things Marijuana
Despite some anecdotal reports that Colorado’s legal marijuana market has contributed to an uprising of homelessness, experts on the subject say they have found no correlation between the two. In fact, these experts say the only situation that appears to be rendering people destitute and without a permanent place to sleep at night are hard times.
Donald Burnes, founder of the Burnes Center on Poverty and Homelessness at the University of Denver, recently told a group of students at Colorado University that the legalization of marijuana has not caused an increase in homelessness throughout the state.
“The best data we have about the issue of whether cannabis has attracted lots of people from out of state is a question from the Point-In Time survey (from the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative),” Burnes said, according to a report from the Pueblo Chieftain. “And that question asks, ‘What is your last permanent place of residence?’”
In fact, Burnes, who is considered the leading expert on homelessness in the state, went on to explain that an analysis of the data actually shows “the numbers of (homeless) people from out of state has remained relatively constant…even…
