KANSAS CITY, Mo.- — Timothy Gilio says a crowd full of marijuana advocates at a recent Kansas City, Missouri, council committee meeting maybe shouldn't have laughed at the Kansas City Police Department's claim that marijuana leads to people dying.
"The idea that people will kill people because of marijuana is ludicrous," Gilio, founder of the Missouri Marijuana Legalization Movement, said.
The Sept. 25 city council meeting considered decriminalizing possession of 100 grams of marijuana. Afterward, KCPD Chief Rick Smith penned a blog post connecting marijuana decriminalization to increased violent crime rates.
Smith cited a study funded by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a component of the president's office, that says crime in Colorado, Washington, and Oregon all went up since legalizing recreational marijuana.
In Colorado and Washington, homicides increased by 41 percent since legalization in 2012. However, the study says homicides in the country as a whole also increased by 41 percent.
"[The police] were referring to the murder rate in Kansas City. Well Kansas City needs to take responsibility for its own murder rate," Gillio said. "It doesn't have anything to do with cannabis. What about the crack and the cocaine and the heroin and the fentanyl and all these things?"
Smith says 10 of the city's 112 homicides so far this year were "directly motivated by marijuana."
According to FBI statistics, Kansas City's violent crime spiked from 5,506 incidents in 2010 to 7,915 incidents in 2016. Decriminalization of marijuana wasn't in motion then.
The crime rate in Colorado, for example, was higher in 2005 through 2007 - before recreational was legalized - than it was in 2017.
"There's so much information online to wade through and we want to make sure it's right there in their faces that you can see," said Clay Stallings, co-founder of The Evolution Magazine, said.
The magazine focuses on cannabis-related issues.
Stallings says people need to go outside the police department to educate themselves.
"A big part of what we're trying to do as a publication is to push that effort," Stallings said. "Not only do that, but to get people out of jail that are still there watching from behind bars how society in general is changing their views on cannabis."
Smith and the study say there is no proof that marijuana leads to more violent crime, but Smith says the "correlation is undeniable."
"It's people like that continuing the stigma talk," Stallings said.
Smith was not able to talk on camera; a police spokesperson said to reference Smith's blog post.
