Drugs lower crime rates (maybe)

Kash over at Angry Bear writes this post postulating that tough drug laws may have caused the decline in violent crime over the past eleven years.

I looked at the change between the 1994 per state violent crime numbers and the 2003 violent crime numbers per state based on whether that state has decriminalized marijuana according to NORML.

I find that a states that have decriminalized marijuana have gone from 791 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 1994 to 460 violent crimes per 100,000 in 2003. States that have not decriminalized marijuana went from 699 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 1994 to 479 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2003.