Contributor: Eric Bloom
With legalization being “all the rage” these days, you have probably found yourself wondering just how many people use marijuana nowadays. I’d be a liar, if I said I hadn’t shared a similar thought. As more and more states go ahead, and allow their residents to partake in cannabis, be it recreationally or medicinally, it only stands to reason that such an influx in enthusiasts has greatly affected marijuana statistics in one way or another.
When tasked with trying to conjure up what percentage of the world smokes weed, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of such a question, and you wouldn’t be the only one. Which is why, when talking about marijuana statistics, specifically looking to find out how many people smoke weed, I find it best to narrow down your horizons a bit, and just focus on the United States. Besides, at the end of the day, don’t you want to know how many people use marijuana in the US? I certainly do.
The main reason I’ve grown so intrigued by this presumably increasing number is because, for years, mainstream society would look down on the cannabis community, and see us all as “lesser than,” simply because we chose to partake in a peaceful, plant-based lifestyle. They would often believe stereotypical depictions of “stoners” on TV or movies, and see them as a broad generalization for marijuana smokers, as a whole.
Which, as you can already tell, couldn’t have been further from the truth.
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These goofy, sluggish interpretations of a “stoner,” were for entertainment purposes. People wanted you to laugh at these ne’er-do-wells, but when you get down to the core of it all, they wanted their audience to see these marijuana enthusiasts as “dopes,” who lack any sort of motivation or intelligence.
To be frank, it’s downright insulting how they’ve depicted marijuana users over time, but as more and more people start to realize how positive and beneficial marijuana actually is, they are beginning to realize that there’s nothing wrong with people who smoke weed, in fact, it stands to reason that we, the cannabis community, have it “all figured out,” so to speak.
We don’t bother ourselves with harmful, super-expensive, incredibly-addictive opioids, or prescription pills of any kind. To be honest, nobody should.
Sure, these exorbitantly priced pills promise the world, with their inherent series of relieving effects, but the converse proves to be true more often than not. They rarely deliver on their effects, and in turn, they leave the consumer way worse than they were before, and these same people likely have developed an addiction to these chemical-laden substances, as well.
Last time I checked, medicine is supposed to make you feel better, not ruin your life. But, I guess “Big Pharma” never got that memo.
But you know who has? The American people, and it shows in the data collected from a recent poll, in which it asked the majority of American citizens if they have ever tried cannabis, at all, throughout the course of their entire life.
Now, if you presented me with this poll, say, ten years ago, I’d venture to guess that this percentage of pot enthusiasts would be low, and I would’ve said that for a couple of reasons.
One, in those times, the majority of this country agreed with the federal government’s distinction of cannabis as a dangerous, addictive drug, that led to harder, actually deadly substances. But, as time and science has proven, that simply isn’t the case.
Also, since those prohibition days, more studies and testimonies have come out proving that marijuana is not only an effective medicine, but its lack of negative side effects, along with its non-addictive nature, make it the end-all, be-all cure for a litany of different ailments and afflictions.
Lastly, I feel like if people were broached with this question a decade ago, when the partaking of cannabis was still an illegal activity, the willingness of the survey’s participants to be 100% honest about their experience with marijuana wouldn’t be as strong as it is today, in our world of marijuana-embracing states and populations.
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So, in short, I feel like, given the cannabis climate right now, and how the industry is one of the most profitable this nation has ever seen, I went into this assuming the amount of people who admittedly smoked weed, at least once in their lives, would be higher than what it would’ve been all those years ago.
And, apparently, all of those assumptions were dead-on.
In a recent Gallup poll, looking to find out this very same information, they discovered that an impressive 45% of people in this country openly admit to trying cannabis, in one way or another, at least once. Which may not seem like much, but it’s the largest figure recorded since this question was first posed to people back in 1969. And this data is already a few years old, so it only stands to reason that that number has grown exponentially since then.
What’s even more encouraging about recent marijuana statistics is that, even if people aren’t admitting to using cannabis, themselves, the majority of people in this country are more than happy to see marijuana legalized and decriminalized nationwide. Such was seen a couple of years ago, when a whopping 60% of voters said they were in favor of cannabis legalization.
That sort of uptick in cannabis acceptance, in concert with an upwards trend in the amount of people using marijuana, is a great sign, and a major step towards progress. If those numbers continue to increase, as they have for the last handful of years, we may be able to live in a world where marijuana is legalized from coast to coast. In turn, hoards of marijuana-related prisoners would be released, and welcomed back into society.
In that scenario, marijuana would, effectively, eliminate any negative stigma that may be lingering in its shadow, and in doing so, more and more people will start to realize that this miraculous plant is abundantly positive and beneficial in a myriad of different ways.
