Somebody's got to be the first state to free the weed through the legislature.

Four states, including California, the nation’s most populous, voted to legalize marijuana on November 8. That doubles the number of legal states to eight, and more than quadruples the number of people living in legal marijuana states, bringing the number to something around 64 million.

Every one of those states legalized marijuana through the initiative process, but we’re not going to see anymore initiatives on state ballots until 2018, and perhaps 2020. That means that if we are to make more progress on spreading marijuana legalization in the next couple of years, it’s going to have to come at the state house instead of the ballot box.

When David Sparer arrived at his Airbnb in Venice, Italy, he encountered an unsurmountable challenge: the spiral staircase. He was debilitated by his arthritis. His friend, the founder of Los Angeles–based cannabis company the Clear, gave him some cannabidiol (CBD) to put under his tongue and on his feet. The next day, Sparer toured all around the city with less pain than he’d had in 10 years on Naproxen, a powerful anti-inflammatory that significantly damaged his liver. 

He was converted to the powers of CBD.

On Election Day, eight states voted to legalize recreational or medical marijuana, bringing the nationwide total of medical states to 29. In Florida, medical marijuana won nearly 2 million more votes than Donald Trump. Added up, 65 million people now live in states that authorize adult recreational use; more than half of all Americans have access to medical marijuana; and almost everyone else lives in a state that permits CBD, a non-psychoactive component of cannabis that helps treatment of juvenile epilepsy. It’s easier now to identify the six states that have done nothing to end the prohibition on marijuana than the ones that are breaking away from the federal law that treats marijuana the same as heroin.

Growth expectations over the long run for the marijuana industry are practically unsurpassed by any other industry in America on a percentage basis. Today, 28 states have legalized medical cannabis, and another eight (along with Washington, D.C.) have legalized recreational adult-use pot. This translates into a $6 billion legal industry right now, according to investment firm Cowen & Co., but it could be a $50 billion industry by 2026. That's a nearly 24% compound annual growth rate over the next decade, for those of you keeping score at home.

New research by a national marketing strategy firm has turned up some surprising findings about Gen X and Millennial cannabis consumers.

Researchers at New York-based Miner & Co. Studio recently took a deep dive into the background, opinions, and buying habits of cannabis consumers in their twenties and thirties who live in legal states. Their survey of 800 brand-aware consumers in Colorado, Washington State, and California found that 90 percent of them use cannabis as part of their wellness and self-care regimens. Only one in ten used cannabis purely to get high or stoned.

Why Trump’s White House (and market economics) could harsh the industry’s mellow.

Three weeks after the November election, 10,000 marijuana industry officials gathered in Las Vegas for the industry’s largest trade show, partying with celebrities like Jim Belushi to celebrate the promise of an industry poised to grow to $50 billion by 2026. After all, voters in eight states had just approved marijuana proposals, allowing either ­recreational pot sales or medical marijuana. California, which in 2018 will allow both recreational and medical uses, will soon become the largest weed market in the nation, accounting for an estimated $6 billion in 2018.

The state of marijuana legalization across the United States is arguably at a crossroads. On the one hand, the judgmental prism through which society has traditionally viewed marijuana usage has become decidedly less harsh over the last few years. Whereas the drug was previously stigmatized as a gateway drug that would inevitably lead to a life of crime and heroin addition, societal acceptance of marijuana as a safe recreational drug seems to be taking hold in many regions across the country.

To this point, the recent election saw four new states — California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — pass laws legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. Meanwhile, the number of states that have legalized marijuana use for medical reasons now stands at 25.