After Ohio Legalizes, How Many Americans 21 and Over Have Access to Legal Cannabis?

Congratulations to Ohio for joining the right side of history. There are a lot of stats being thrown around regarding what percentage of Americans now have access to legal cannabis. I took a look at some basic data from the US Census to arrive at some estimates of my own.

Raw Numbers

Question: After yesterday’s Ohio win, How many adults aged 21 and over in the US live in a state where cannabis is legalized for recreational purposes?
Answer: 132M adults 21+

Question: How many adults aged 21 and over live in the US in total?
Answer: 246.8M adults 21+

So this means 53.5% of adults 21+ now live a state where cannabis is legalized for recreational purposes. The “Just over half” statements check out…initially.

Enter Nuance

Look what happens if we change the definition to those adults 21+ who actually have access via a regulated commercial market. To do this you have to pull out Ohio and Virginia as neither groups of adults 21+ actually have access. We also have to give many other states a haircut as these states allow cities and counties to prohibit cannabis businesses, like retail. We limited CA, NY and NJ by the percentage of population where retail is open by county and NJ by municipality. So that meant reducing CA by 63%, NY by 33% and NJ by 60%.
When we take into account this nuance we’re left with:

Question: After yesterday’s Ohio win, how many adults aged 21 and over in the US have access to legal adult-use recreational cannabis?
Answer: 89.6M adults 21+

So this means 36.3% of adults 21+ now live a state where they have access to legal adult-use recreational cannabis. The “Just over half” statements start to crumble.

I’m going to keep running scenarios with this dataset and other population datasets to see what other interesting insights emerge.

Why Are We Asking Consumers to Memorize Chemical Compounds?

"Look at those terps!"
"Check out those terpene levels"
"This strain has a lot of terps"

I've been in the cannabis industry for years now and I'm getting a little impatient with "Terpenes are the future of how consumers will buy cannabis" theory. I'm constantly hearing how "good" a cannabis product is based on the same vague references to terpenes that are listed in the beginning of this post.

My opinion is that consumers are going to buy based off quality ingredients, consistency, and brand value transparency...not chemical compounds. The "connoisseurs" or "ganjiers", maybe. Maybe.

I want to believe that terpenes will play a big role in cannabis product selection because I'm becoming a bit of a nerd learning cannabis science, especially as it relates to pharmacological use cases. But I am still struggling envisioning the day that I or someone else walks into a dispensary or visits an online store looking for the "linalool" section. We don't have to create our own lexicon and confuse consumers. Lavender, gas, citrus, pine, pepper, etc. These are all words consumers use that they understand. Why are we making this more difficult than it has to be? Why are we asking consumers to memorize chemical compounds?

Old Pal “Baked At Home” Hits The Mark

This product hits the mark and, in our view, provides validation for the "cannabis will be everywhere" element of our thesis. The cannabis plant is so dynamic and we have decades of product innovation ahead of us. That is what makes the consumer side of this business so attractive to us as investors.

Some people may see this as a "clever product". We see this is as a company who knows their customer base and provides straight forward solutions to their needs in the form of a product. Making your own edibles seems daunting. This product makes it possible.

Cheers to Old Pal for keeping it simple and sensible when it comes to new products. Will this be a big category? We don't think it matters. This is a showcase of cannabis product development, branding and marketing maturing in the cannabis industry and we're very excited about it. And we can't wait to try them...