An 8% rise in homelessness has fueled speculation over whether legalization boosted the numbers of displaced in America’s unofficial legal cannabis capital

Annie Mae Noel has been on the streets since her Denver house, which had been in her family for more than a century, went into foreclosure in 2015. She also happens to smoke pot.



“I use marijuana to treat my MS, it has nothing to do with me not having a home,” she said recently, standing outside the Denver Rescue Mission.



But some in Denver, the unofficial legal marijuana capital of the US, are not so sure. Colorado has seen an uptick in homelessness of just over 8% since 2013, a year after the state backed legalization, fueling speculation over whether the looser rules have boosted the numbers of those on the city’s sidewalks and in its shelters.

The question reverberates beyond the Rocky Mountains, because voters in California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada approved the recreational use of marijuana in the 2016 elections, joining four other states and the District of Columbia.

In Colorado, prominent politicians have sounded a warning. “There’s no question that marijuana and other drugs – in combination with mental illness or other disabling conditions – are essential contributors to chronic homelessness,” Governor John Hickenlooper recently said in his state of the state address.

The governor has proposed that some marijuana revenues, which reached $200m in taxes and fees in 2016, should be directed toward homelessness programs. Some read this as a legislator’s way of saying that the problem should pay for itself.



He has the support of homelessness advocates such as Daniel Starrett, a divisional commander of the Salvation Army. “The marijuana industry needs to accept responsibility for unintended consequences of their impact on society,” he said.

Starrett contends that marijuana is a gateway drug to other substances ­– a question on which the science is not settled – and that the financial burden of marijuana use on struggling families can lead to them losing their homes.

Marijuana has transformed the Colorado landscape since it was legalized in 2012, creating an economic boom of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity. It has also spawned detractors: a few years later, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly sent correspondent Jesse Watters to Denver for a segment that spliced interviews with homeless people who consume marijuana and clips from stoner films such as Half Baked.

But many reject a chain of causation. “Smoking weed didn’t cause me to be here,” said James Leroy Aiken, a middle-aged man who has been homeless for four years and was waiting for dinner outside the rescue mission. He attributes his homelessness to the death of several family members, a learning disability that prevented him from learning how to read, and his addiction to meth.



Medical marijuana gives him some control over his schizoaffective disorder and anxiety, he said. “It also helped me get off methamphetamine.”



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The leading culprits in substance abuse are actually alcohol, narcotics and opiates, not cannabis, said John Parvensky of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. For this reason, some have accused the governor of hypocrisy, considering that before becoming a politician he co-founded a craft brewery.

“Marijuana tends to be a companion drug to those other things rather than a sole-addicted substance,” Parvensky added.

Yet there may be a kernel of truth in the governor’s comments.

More than 100,000 new residents flooded the state in 2015, when it was reported to be short 15,000 homes. Legal cannabis isn’t the only reason for the mass migration to Denver ­– accessible healthcare and low unemployment also help ­– though there’s no doubt it is boosting the economy.

Marijuana tourism has led to surging occupancy rates at hotels, said Parvenksy, including the low-cost options that are often a last resort for people on the verge of homelessness.

“We are seeing people who were homeless in other states coming here specifically because they can get marijuana here,” said Tom Luerhs, executive director of the St Francis Center in Denver. “Others come here thinking they can get a job in the marijuana industry, and then they can’t get a job as quickly as they thought, and they end up homeless.”



The effects go beyond real estate. Last summer Denver’s mayor, Michael Hancock, blamed legal marijuana for two separate acts of minor violence committed by homeless transplants to the city: a man swinging a PVC pipe at pedestrians, and a clash between panhandlers and office workers. The mayor referred to them as a “scourge of hoodlums” and added, “This is one of the results of the legalization of marijuana in Denver, and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

Still, such cases seem to be the exception rather than the rule. Annie Mae Noel said that marijuana brings a sense of peace to the Denver homeless community.

“Most of my adopted friends and family, we all smoke pot, and we try to get together as often as we can and share,” she said, shivering against the cold. “If one doesn’t have weed, we make sure they’re provided for. We take care of each other. We like to call it our altitude adjustment.”

Noel thinks those on the other side of the marijuana debate are shortsighted.

“There are all kinds of reasons people out here are homeless. Most people don’t realize that they’re two paychecks away from where we are right now.”