Do medical marijuana dispensary bans result in declining drug violations in Colorado public schools?
It may be too early for definitive evidence but the answer for two communities, at least, seems to be no.
Virtually all of the 85 communities and local government councils enacting dispensary bans have done so in 2010 or later, and those votes have typically included closure dates coming months afterward.
For example, voters in Fort Collins enacted a dispensary ban in November 2011 and set Tuesday as the deadline for closing up shop.
Aurora voters passed a ban in November 2010 and, since then, the number of students caught selling marijuana has gone down slightly. But the number found possessing marijuana has gone up.
During the 2009-10 school year, before the ban, 50 students were caught selling and 312 were found in possession. The following year, in 2010-11, 39 students were caught selling and 367 possessing.
“We do not believe that our data is related to the dispensary ban,” said Aurora Public Schools spokeswoman Paula Hans. “Instead, we believe it is because we have increased the number of APS security officers who are in our schools monitoring these types of behaviors.”
Perhaps more telling over time will be the experience in Grand Junction, where voters in April 2011 banned dispensaries.
An Aurora ban may not have as much impact because nearby communities, such as Denver, continue to allow them. But the Grand Junction vote means there’s only one legal dispensary left today in all of Mesa County - and that’s in Palisade, 12 miles away.
Mesa County schools have seen a steady increase in drug violations over the past four years, from 100 in 2007-08 to 155 in 2010-11. But district officials aren’t sure the brief influx of dispensaries accounts for that.
Nor do they think the closure of the dispensaries will turn things around.
“Frankly, when you look historically at any kind of discipline record, it tends to be an up-and-down wave,” said district spokesman Jeff Kirtland. “There are years when there are high numbers of incidents, and years when there are low numbers. We continue to see that trend, up and down, consistently.”
He thinks other factors - population growth and the boom-and-bust economy in Grand Junction – could be just as important as the presence of medical marijuana dispensaries in shaping those numbers.
This story is by Rebecca Jones, Education News Colorado. You can read more in this series: A Tale of Two Medical Marijuana Cities.
