(MISES) – Over the past year, three U.S. states have enacted new legislation legalizing recreational marijuana within their borders. In May 2022, recreational cannabis became legal in Rhode Island, and the same occurred in Missouri in December of last year. In the wake of the 2022 election, in which Maryland voters approved Maryland Question 4, recreational use became legal in that state as well. With the addition of Rhode Island, New Hampshire – where cannabis is "only" decriminalized and legal for medical purposes – is now the only state in New England where recreational marijuana is not legal. Missouri joins Alaska and Montana as one of the handful of "red states" that have legalized recreational use as well.
Now, with these three states approving recreational use, more than 156 million Americans now live in states where the possession and use of marijuana has been effectively legalized in a manner similar to alcoholic beverages. That's 47 percent of the US population. It is now simply incorrect to say "marijuana is an illegal drug in the United States" just as it is wrong to say "abortion is illegal in the United States." The fact is, such things are legal in some parts of the United States, and illegal in others.
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Notably, Rhode Island is also one of a growing number of states where recreational cannabis has been legalized through the legislative process rather than through statewide referenda or voter initiatives. Initially, recreational legalization was only politically possible through voter initiatives, as legislators refused to approve legalization themselves. The first successful cases of this were in Colorado and Washington State in 2012, and they were followed by Alaska and Oregon in 2014. Since then, recreational cannabis has been legalized through a variety of methods in sixteen other states for a total of twenty-one.
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