A renewed push to end marijuana prohibition in Vermont kicked off Wednesday with a news conference at the State House.

Members of the Vermont Coalition to Regulate Marijuana, including representatives from Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, ACLU-VT, and the Marijuana Policy Project, said Vermont should join other New England states that are removing legal penalties for adult possession and home cultivation of small amounts of marijuana. Massachusetts and Maine are in the process of implementing voter-approved initiatives to make marijuana legal for adults and regulate it like alcohol.

Legislators in more than a dozen states have introduced measures to loosen laws restricting access to or criminalizing marijuana, a rush of legislative activity that supporters hope reflects a newfound willingness by public officials to embrace a trend toward legalization.

The gamut covered by measures introduced in the early days of legislative sessions underscores the patchwork approach to marijuana by states across the country — and the possibility that the different ways states treat marijuana could come to a head at the federal Justice Department, where President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to become attorney general is a staunch opponent of legal pot.

Voters in eight states passed marijuana legalization laws following the 2016 presidential election, giving the legalization movement the required momentum for more states across the country to carry out discussions on the decriminalization of cannabis in 2017.

Here are seven states to watch that are gearing up to legalize cannabis in 2017:

Delaware

The recreational legalization of cannabis is expected to be discussed by the state’s officials in early 2017. Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, during a Medical Marijuana Act Oversight Committee meeting in October 2016, said: “It’s time to certainly look at it.”

Having a marijuana offense on a person’s record can wreak havoc on that person’s life for many years, well after they were caught with marijuana. A marijuana conviction can prevent a person from getting financial assistance in college, prevent them from getting a job, and even prevent them from being approved for a rental property to live in. That’s why I always call a marijuana conviction on a person’s record the ‘marijuana scarlet letter.’

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.

Study from: 

Projectknow.com (http://www.projectknow.com/)

original study here :

http://www.projectknow.com/discover/high-school-drug-use/

American teenagers are more likely to smoke marijuana than binge drink, a new report reveals.

Meanwhile in Europe, marijuana consumption is minimal while drinking levels are far higher than in the United States.

The data, published in a recent report by addiction-awareness firm Project Know, will reignite the national debate on marijuana legalization as the election approaches.

Acceptance of marijuana seems to have reached a tipping point in the United States. Four states and the District of Columbia have already legalized it, half the states have medical marijuana laws now (two-thirds if you count the CBD-only states), and as many as a half dozen states, including California, could vote on legalization in November.

Public opinion polls now consistently report majority support for legalization nationwide, and pot is increasingly moving from newspapers' crime pages to the finance and culture sections.

With 22.2 million Americans reporting they've gotten high within the past month, it's no secret that the U.S. is having an increasingly open love affair with cannabis. But which states are the most open-minded when it comes to cannabis?

Vermont has approved medical cannabis for chronic pain in an effort to reduce opiate abuse. Will other states follow suit?

The country is currently mired in what some are calling an “opioid painkiller crisis,” and Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin took concrete action earlier this month to address the crisis.

The Democratic governor added chronic pain to the state’s list of health conditions that qualify for medical marijuana treatment.

 Despite what you've read in the news, marijuana legalization in Vermont isn't dead. Yes, the House defeated a Senate bill that would have legalized recreational marijuana use. But that setback hasn't derailed the movement. 

"Definitely the best is yet to come," Matt Simon - New England Political Director of the Marijuana Policy Project - told Civilized. "I hate losing but we're not losing. We're on the way to marijuana being legal across New England in the next two to three years."

Here's why Simon is so positive.