Amidst the election on Tuesday, Nov. 8, numerous states voted for the legalization of marijuana for both recreational and medical use. California, Massachusetts and Nevada all approved recreational marijuana initiatives on Tuesday night. All the while, voters in Florida, North Dakota, Montana and Arkansas approved initiatives for medical marijuana. The propositions passed in every state except for Arizona.
This has been the biggest electoral victory for marijuana reform since 2012, when Washington and Colorado approved the use of marijuana recreationally. Currently, eight states and the District of Columbia can legally use marijuana recreationally, while 29 states have legalized medical marijuana.
Ninety-six percent of the U.S. population lives in a state with some form of legal marijuana. That means that one in five Americans now live in a state with legal recreational marijuana.
The new states will be able to bask in the benefits of having legal marijuana, just like Colorado and Washington. Legalization has created thousands of new jobs in the industry, such as bud trimming and marijuana retail. In Colorado, about 10,000 people are employed in the marijuana industry. Hundreds of millions of dollars are brought in by the state each year.
The U.S. market for legal cannabis grew 74 percent from $1.3 billion to $2.7 billion from 2013 to 2014. Money brought in from taxes on marijuana sales can go to education, care for the homeless and general repairs to structures in the state, such as streetlights and highways.
Before voting, only about five percent of the population in the United States could legally smoke marijuana. With California making up about 11 percent of the population, it was a big deal for legalization to appear on the ballot. California’s Proposition 64 has been described as the most important cannabis measure America has seen. The fifth largest economy in the world, California is expected to have a recreational marijuana market larger than Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska combined.
Marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Substances that fall into this category are said to have no accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety to use under medical supervision and have a high potential for abuse by users. This puts marijuana in the same group as heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy. Despite marijuana being legalized in individual states, it is still viewed federally as a dangerous, illegal drug. In 2014, at least 620,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession alone, a rate of more than one per minute.
Marijuana is heavily regulated in states where it is legal. In most states, the user needs to be at least 21 years old and can possess up to one ounce. In Colorado, those with medical marijuana “red cards” that are issued by the state on the recommendation of a physician can have more at a time. Each plant being sold needs to be tagged with a radio frequency identification chip, so the state can track it. Any form of marijuana, whether it is a plant or infused in products, needs to be tested for potency and contaminants before being sold in child-resistant containers.
As the marijuana movement has evolved over the past few years, the drug could be legalized all around the country in just a few years.
Samara Rosenfeld is a fourth-year student majoring in communication studies with a minor in journalism. She can be reached at SR806559@wcupa.edu.