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.

Celebration at a Cannabis Control Board Meeting in NY

Celebration at the Cannabis Control Board meeting today was so great to see.

"New York Needs You To Run Successful Cannabis Businesses"
- Chris Alexander

Plenty of work to do but it's safe to say the market is working out the kinks and heating up.

1. Expansion of CAURD retail licenses bringing the total to 463 licenses.
2. Grower Showcase is happening! This has been quite the 3 month rollercoaster but it's back on. Details needing to be ironed out, however this is a very exciting development.
3. Universal application process to be presented in September
4. Research and medical Cannabis Program advancements
5. Addressing and adjustments to the Cannabinoid Hemp Regulations.

Why Aren’t More People Talking About Cannabis As A Potential Alternative To Opioids?

Why aren’t more people in cannabis talking about this?

Cannabis is a potential alternative to opioids because it has been shown to be effective at treating pain. From multiple recently published studies, adult use cannabis markets have a measurable positive impact in the fight against the opioid addiction crisis. And it’s a fight worth fighting. “Opioid overdose deaths in the U.S. between 1999 and 2019, nearly 500,000 Americans died from an opioid related overdose (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021).”

In a study recently published in Social Science by Samantha Marinello and Lisa M. Powell states with medical cannabis laws (MCL) saw an 8.5% decrease in opioid prescribing relative to states without MCL. These findings are consistent with previous studies published between 2014-2018 which observed reductions in hospitalizations related to opioid dependence, abuse or overdose.

In a separate study recently published in Health Economics by Shyam R. concluded that states that enacted recreational cannabis laws from 2010-2019 led to a reduction in codeine dispensed at retail pharmacies.

Cannabis as a pain management alternative has ZERO overdose risk and far less addiction risk. So what are we waiting for?

Who is developing cannabinoid-based products that specifically target opioid replacement?