Living in pot-legal Oregon I have seen this in my little town.
The real problem is the rules about selling marijuana. Because it is illegal at the federal level, banks will not give accounts to mj stores, and all transactions must be in cash. The money quote from the article is "crime follows cash", which is absolutely true.
Think about this. If the stores could take checks and Visa cards, there would be a lot less cash to attract criminals. They could pay the rent with a check instead of a stack of Benjamins, and would not have to worry about being held up on the way.
If we took some other item, auto parts, for example, and made it illegal to sell auto parts for anything other than cash, there would be lots of stories about how auto parts stores lead to increased crime and how we have to eradicate this scourge from our society.
The problem is not what is being sold, but that it is only sold for cash money.
I look at the legal pot industry and have to laugh.
Right now it looks like there is lots of money to be made, but in a few years prices will come down to a little bit over the cost of production, and there will be a huge shakeout.
Yeah, but auto parts don't cause brain damage or turn people into paranoid lunatics. Or maybe they do.
Liquor stores are cash business. But it is the dope shops getting robbed.
It isn’t the cash.
I think you nailed it.