In the midst of a raging national debate on how Americans use marijuana, a team of student researchers from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs is collecting data that could help separate marijuana fact from fiction.

Dr. Megan Holmes, graduate of the UCLA Social Welfare Department, joined the Mandel School faculty in August, 2012.

Megan Holmes, alum of the UCLA Social Welfare Doctoral Program and the UCLA Spatial Analysis Lab,  recently published an article in the Journal of Psychology and Psychiatry

Article Key Points:

People United for Medical Marijuana are putting forth a strong effort to legalize medical marijuana in Florida. Among the concerns of those opposed are arguments that areas surrounding dispensaries would see lower property values and higher crime rates.

Saturday, March 30 from 1:00 to 2:30pm at the California Science Center

Washington DC councilmember Kenyan McDuffie recently submitted legislation which would limit the number of marijuana cultivation centers and dispensaries within any single ward.  On the same day, his office filed a bill promoting distillery pubs, stating that the bill “will bring a significant economic impact to our Ward and the city by creating new jobs and tax revenue generated by increased sales of craft distilled spirits.”

Much research has found that people who are heavy drinkers are more likely to be involved with the child welfare system due to child abuse and/or neglect.  Recent research has found that having more alcohol outlets in an area (e.g., bars, liquor stores) is related to higher rates of child maltreatment.  To date, however, interventions designed to reduce substance use among families involved with the child welfare system have met with limited success.

Professor Bridget Freisthler and colleagues (including students from the Social Welfare and Urban Planning programs)  recently published a study finding that  dispensaries in Sacramento that utilized specific security features (having security cameras, requiring a marijuana recommendation identification card) had lower violent crime within 100 and 250 feet of the dispensary.  See http://publicaffairs.ucla.edu/news/school-public-affairs/study-pot-shop-security-could-reduce-crime 

Christina Tam will be presenting "An Exploratory Analysis of Neighborhood and Delinquency among Southeast Asian Youth" on Friday, February 22 at the UC-wide conference. The event, titled, "We asked for workers and families came: Children, youth and families in migration,"  is hosted by the UCLA Program on International Migration.

UCLA Department of Social Welfare Spatial Analysis Lab current and former members will be presenting at the 17th annual conference of The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR).

Social Welfare faculty member Dr. Bridget Freisthler has received a grant from the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC) to "support the formation of sustainable university/practice partnerships for the purpose of evaluating emerging practices or programs to inform the development of curriculum and training products for the Title IV-E stipend and child welfare training programs."

An interim report is posted in our "Housing Stability Among Transition Age Youth" center projects.

Ph.D. Student Nancy Kepple and Professor Bridget Freisthler have the top downloaded article of 2012 at the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Exploring the Ecological Association Between Crime and Medical Marijuana Dispensaries

UCLA Social Welfare Ph.D. graduate and current Case Western Reserve University faculty member, Megan Holmes, maps the prevalence of domestic violence throughout Cuyahoga County. This evidence that domestic violence does not only occur in inner city neighborhoods, click "read more" to see the maps attached.

Click the following links to read the news report:
WKYC l Fox 19

Visit Bridget Freisthler's Social Science Space Blog.

With a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles looming, Social Welfare professor Bridget Freisthler conducted groundbreaking research funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) to put a number on exactly how many dispensaries there are in the city limits.

The final tally, 472 as of Tuesday – two days before the ban was to go into effect – is radically different than the amount of medical marijuana dispensaries believed to be in operation.

Listen to our podcast on The Geography of Drug Market Activities and Child Maltreatment, click here.

A workshop about the social ecology of substance use was sponsored by Prevention Research Center, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). This workshop reviewed the scientific goals and approaches that are used in the field to address the social ecological problems of substance use on both the micro and macro level.

Bridget Freisthler, Ph.D presented on the Medical Marijuana Dispensaries and the Local Ecology. Click here to view this powerpoint presentation.