Marijuana has been in the news for quite some time. Since Proposition 215 was enacted in California in 1996, the medical cannabis industry has grown to the extent that we see today. Now in 2014, nearly 20 years after prop 215 went into effect, we have seen 22 other states either legalize cannabis completely, legalize it for medical use, or simply decriminalize it. This has generated a lot of hype surrounding the issue in both social and traditional media. With all this hype, just how widespread is the legal use of cannabis?
It is likely too early to know how truly widespread cannabis use is in the states that fully legalized it in the year 2012, but there is data available for the state of California, since medical use has been allowed for quite some time. In a study conducted in 2014, data from the California Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System 2012 survey was analyzed in order to determine if there were differences in medical cannabis use between different demographics.[1] According to the results, 5% of California adults have used medical cannabis at least once in their lifetime. The rate of cannabis use among all demographics was not drastically different than the rate for the total population, with use ranging from 2-9% depending on the group examined.[1]
This information seems to suggest that the amount of attention that medical marijuana receives is disproportionate to the amount it is actually used for medicinal purposes. A good follow-up would be to attempt to determine the amount of legal use in all states for any purpose. To take that a step further, comparing the rates of legal use to the rates of illegal use nationwide could provide some perspective with regard to how many people are directly affected by marijuana legislation.
- Ryan-Ibarra et al. (26 September 2014) Prevalence of medical marijuana use in California, 2012. http://www-ncbi-nlm-nih-gov.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/pubmed/25255903 accessed 28 September 2014.