US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana

Weed being illegal on a federal level has had some interesting effects. Because of these laws, all legal weed has to be grown, processed, and retailed within a single state. So much industry and local employment has been created by the legal barriers in place.

It’s probably still a net positive to release the federal restriction, but I hope all these small/mid sized businesses don’t get gulped up by big tobacco or other mega corps

'Time for them to perform due diligence and refactor their operations to take advantage of the new legal landscape to retain competitive pricing inorder for' all these small/mid sized businesses don't get gulped up by big tobacco or other mega corps.

American corporations are great at retooling their business/supply chains for different products (see how quickly everyone moved into hard seltzers).

I do expect big tobacco to move in aggressively if weed is made legal.

Hasn’t really happened in Canada. I think a small-player alcohol company did move in, but only after the bubble popped.

Turns out legalization of a drug doesn’t lead to massive increases in consumption. Who knew.

Definitely kneecapped the black market though: most moved to the legal side and black market prices cratered.

Marijuana use has massively increased in the US as states have legalized it.

Users have doubled: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264862/cannabis-consumpt...

Use among users has also increased 20%: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/962353

I have had my first legal weed experiences in the past year in New York and even the lowest THC % at the legal weed store is stronger than anything I use to get on the black market when weed was illegal.

Then there are these incredible 10mg THC infused lemonades that are amazing.

On the other hand, the novelty of legal weed only lasted about 4 months for me. Because the store was there and there was this selection I never had access to before I wanted to try different things and was smoking more than I would have normally. At the end of the day though it is all still just weed. It is fun for me but only once a month at most now.

I also don't know a single person that didn't smoke weed because it was illegal and now they do because they can go to the store and purchase it legally.

I think that the polling has doubled for users because people can answer the poll honestly when weed is legal. The idea that weed being illegal is keeping 50% of the potential weed smoking population from smoking is utterly preposterous.

If anything, what is interesting is how many people who would never try weed when it was illegal, will still never try it when it is legal. They may say it is because it is illegal or they don't want to smoke but you can't sell them on 10mg legal lemonaid either.