The marijuana industry is booming across the country. While marijuana use is still viewed negatively by many, this is rapidly changing. Legal marijuana sales in the U.S. increased 67% in 2020 and another 40% in 2021, reaching a hefty $26.5 billion! In 2022, these sales are estimated to have exceeded $32 billion in sales. According to Gallup, the percentage of adults in the country who have tried marijuana at least once is 49%. Even 19% of persons born before 1945 say they have tried marijuana. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, 91% of adults in the U.S. support legalization.
Today, medical marijuana is legal in 38 states. In 21 of those states and the District of Columbia, recreational marijuana is legal, and at least nine more states have ballot initiatives at some stage of development that would legalize marijuana use to some degree. Canada legalized marijuana nationally in 2018. At the federal level in the U.S., marijuana remains classified as a Schedule 1 drug, which is the most restrictive drug classification under federal law. Heroin and crack cocaine are Schedule 1 drugs, alongside marijuana. There have been efforts to legalize marijuana at the federal level, nationwide, including the 2021 Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, an all-encompassing effort that fell well short of passage in Congress. In March 2022, the House passed the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act intended to decriminalize marijuana use. Likewise, MORE failed to garner any interest or support in the Senate. To date, no bill legalizing the use of medical, much less recreational marijuana use, has stood a serious chance of becoming law.