RAND Corp. Takes Back Study on Pot and Crime

A controversial study about crime and medical marijuana facilities in the Los Angeles area issued by the RAND Corp. in September now has been withdrawn and retracted, according to its authors in a statement Monday.

The study claimed that crime rises in areas where medical marijuana dispensaries are shut down.

But, , L.A. city and county officials quickly disputed the claim.

Frank Mateljan, spokesman for the L.A. City Attorney's office, said that the study "relies exclusively upon faulty assumptions, conjecture, irrelevant data, untested measurements and incomplete results. The conclusions are therefore highly suspect and unreliable."

Now, about one month later, RAND has announced that the study was flawed. How so? Well, here's what the policy research group's statement said:

Questions raised following publication prompted RAND to undertake an unusual post-publication internal review of the study. That review determined the crime data used in the analysis are insufficient to answer the questions targeted by the study.

The primary issue discovered during the internal review was that the data described as covering the city of Los Angeles and surrounding areas did not include crime data reported by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Again, when this study was released, the L.A. Police Department, among other officials, immediately hinted at RAND's so-called "primary issue."

"We take our commitment to quality and objectivity seriously so we have retracted the study in order to correct it," said Debra Knopman, vice president of the RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment division, in the statement.