Ever wonder how your state stands up to the others in terms of marijuana tolerance? We don't mean how much your state can smoke, but how tolerant the locals are toward cannabis. The real-estate website Estately has the answer. 

Using specialized metrics, they put together rankings for all 50 states in their "Marijuana Enthusiasm Index." The criteria are: the percentage of monthly marijuana users, the average price of cannabis, the average number of marijuana-related Google searches, the legal status of marijuana and expressions of public interest (based on Facebook user data). 

Here are five interesting findings.

Illegal marijuana production has fallen drastically in recent years in Washington state, although law enforcement says public lands here remain a hotbed for cartel activity.

The number of plants seized in Washington state in 2014 was 57,000 — about 80 percent less than what was seized in 2010, according to a new report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. Over that same period, the amount of processed marijuana seized dropped from 3,126 pounds of product to 635 pounds, less than a quarter of what agencies had found five years ago.

Medical marijuana advocates are hoping Congress will move to loosen restrictions on the drug and approve reclassifying it from schedule I to schedule II, but legislation to do that, and to loosen research restrictions, has not gained much traction on Capitol Hill.

Patients, dispensary owners, advocates, and several members of the US House of Representatives staged a rally on the Capitol grounds March 22, calling for a congressional vote on the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and Respect States (CARERS) Act (S. 683). That bill was introduced in the Senate in March 2015 by Cory Booker (D-NJ). A companion bill was introduced in the House shortly thereafter by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn).

In 2013, Patrick and Beth Collins were desperate. Thirteen‐year‐old Jennifer, the younger of their two children, faced a life‐threatening situation. In response, the Collins family took extreme measures—sending Jennifer thousands of miles away in the company of her mother. Beth and Jennifer became refugees from a capricious government whose laws threatened Jennifer’s health, the family’s safety, and the life they had built together.

Marijuana sales in the United States reached a record high in 2015. Legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia, a whopping $3.4 billion of the green stuff was sold last year. The best way to give that figure some kind of perspective is by comparing it to the sales of well-known and established brands.

In early 2014, Sharif Ibrahim was offered an unusual project. Ibrahim, then a Ph.D. student in mathematics at Washington State University, in Pullman, spent most of his time working on esoteric geometric-analysis problems. Now, his adviser told him, the state of Washington needed help. About a year and a half earlier, voters had approved the legalization of recreational marijuana, and the state was preparing to issue licenses to marijuana retailers. It had capped the number of licenses at three hundred and thirty-four—but the state received more than two thousand applications to open stores. The officials wanted a fair, and random, way of handing out the golden tickets.

When Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, drug policy advocates and pot consumers believed racial drug arrests would drop dramatically. That logic inspired voters in Washington, D.C., Oregon, and Alaska to hit the polls two years later in favor of less restrictive pot laws. 

But it turns out that advocates and consumers were only half right. Drug arrests have plummeted overall, yet black people are still disproportionately arrested. 

Reports out of Washington state last week confirmed what many suspected but few had publicly acknowledged: Colorado’s cannabis pesticide problem isn’t just Colorado’s problem. It exists in every state. 

How to make pot seem as all-American as an ice-cold beer.

Watching marijuana become legalized in a select handful of states over the past few years has been interesting and exciting for a number of reasons.