Those statistics deserve some skepticism.
Your link deserves some skepticism, as well.
He states "there's no reason to choose 2014 as a year" followed closely by "While Alaska and Oregon did officially legalize marijuana then"...
That's a rather blatant self-rebuttal.
Further, he's wrong about Colorado. "While Alaska and Oregon did officially legalize marijuana then, Colorado and Washington did so in 2012."
No, in Colorado, they VOTED to legalize weed in 2012, "The Colorado Amendment 64, which was passed by voters on November 6, 2012, led to legalization in January 2014." (From
Wiki)
Oh hey, 2014 is important for Colorado, as well.
Let's take a look at Washington, "I-502 mandated that rules for producers, processors and retailers be in place by December 1, 2013. The Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board had initially anticipated the first proposed section would be approved in April.[94] Distribution of draft rules to all stakeholders was planned May, with initial filing of all rules in June, before public hearings and adoption of the rules, to begin taking initial applications by September, and to begin issuing licenses in December 2013." (from
Wiki, as well)
OH, there was ONE MONTH in Washington before 2014 where the numbers might be skewed!!!
Additionally, his pointing out that Oregon didn't fit the trend in the first couple of years actually ought to be a warning. Look what digging into the numbers resulted in:
In 2015, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed an emergency bill declaring marijuana sales legal to recreational users from dispensaries starting October 1, 2015, during an "early sales" period, through the end of 2016. Additional legislation signed into law by Governor Brown in March 2016 allowed the sale of medical and recreational marijuana from the same outlets.[50] Effective January 1, 2017, marijuana can be sold for recreational use only by businesses that have obtained a "recreational license" from the OLCC; such businesses can also sell for medical use.[51] Medical marijuana dispensaries that had not obtained a recreational license were no longer permitted to sell for recreational use after 2016. In mid-December 2016, there were fewer than 100 Oregon businesses licensed to sell recreational marijuana, whereas there were more than 300 medical-marijuana dispensaries[51] (down from a peak of 425).[3] However, the number of applications for recreational licenses jumped sharply in the last months of 2016, and the number of licensed retailers grew from 99 to 260 in the one-month span from early December 2016 to early January 2017.[3]
From
Wiki, again.
So, the digging into this debunking appears to actually make a stronger case. ANY TIME before 2014 would not include the effects of legalized weed, so he was perfectly justified in choosing 2014. (And the debunker seems to be talking out of his... imagination.)
Additionally, it appears that full implementation of legal weed didn't really occur in Oregon until nearly 2017, so pointing out that it didn't see an increase in the years prior to 2017
1 actually helps strengthen the point.
(For completeness, full legalization of weed in Alaska took effect in February of 2015 and state licensed dispensaries opened in 2016- so 2014 was actually too early for Oregon and Alaska.)
Your debunker appears to have an agenda or at least a lack of curiosity once his priors had been justified.
1: and yet, when included in the other 3 states who had previous implemented, still averages a much higher rate of violent crime, which makes the results seem to be under-counting crime increases.