Increased Cannabis use in Canada related to lower crime rate?

There was an article which appeared last week which stated that Canada is the top industrial nation in which the population aged 15-64 who have used marijuana within the past year (15.6%). We even beat out the Americans at 12.6%,  the Jamaicans at 10.7%, and the Dutch at 6.1%.  (Mind you, Canada has a ways to go, since it is ranked 5^th in the world, behind Papua New Guinea (29.5%), Micronesia (29.1%), Ghana (21.5%) and Zambia (17.7%).

 

And just this week, CBC reported that Canada's crime rate in 2006 was lowest in 25 years (in spite of the fact that youth crime rate had increased by 3%).

 

Hmm… I wonder if we're seeing a cause-and-effect here? If not, these observation MUST somehow be related to global warming, everything else is these days…