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.

The Operator Perspective Mitigates Risk

Many of our investors in the Receptive Capital Syndicate are operators. The operator perspective mitigates risk in investing.

The ability to conduct due diligence through the lens of an operator enables the operator to, among other things, ask the tough questions, manage growth expectations and provide the entrepreneur with more useful feedback. That is most likely why operator investors make great advisors! We have been cautious to lead another deal this year. Candidly, we have not seen many new companies that fit our investment strategy and those who did, were still hoping to raise at unrealistic valuations in a historically timid cannabis investing environment.

This is starting to change but It’s still not clear to us if we’ve begun the turn around. We’ve seen signs of life in September following the HHS announcement and more recently with SAFER making its way through committee for the first time. Companies who are positioned well and called off fund raises in 2022 and 2023 are back out again. While attending the Benzinga Cannabis conference in Chicago last week, we noticed a different energy. We would call it “cautious optimism”. Perhaps the greater investor community is starting to take a page from the operator perspective.

Waiting To Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and The Fight for Racial Justice

Today we’re celebrating 420 by highlighting and encouraging you to purchase a new book by Tahira Rehmatullah and Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, PhD. The title is Waiting To Inhale: Cannabis Legalization and The Fight For Racial Justice.

After over a decade in the legal cannabis industry, Tahira continues to inspire and call for change in the criminal justice system. And just as important, the restoration of the communities harmed by the war on drugs.

We’re proud to know Tahira and we congratulate her and Akwasi on the launch of their new book. This is a critical topic until it is no longer a topic. Link to the book in the comments.

Happy 420 to everyone. Stay safe.

Cannabis is Regenerative
Cannabis is Personal
Cannabis is for Everyone