The U.S. Cannabis Revolution: Two Charts

Americans are no strangers to Revolutions. They engineered their own political revolution with their War of Independence.

The abolition of slavery produced a social revolution in the U.S. Rapid technological change and globalization is driving an ongoing economic revolution.

Now Americans are participating in a legal revolution: the movement to legalize cannabis. Cannabis legalization in the U.S. is an exercise in grassroots activism – aided by the courts.

We now know there was never any justification for cannabis Prohibition. Cannabinoids, the active ingredients in the cannabis plant, are produced naturally in the human body. They are essential to human health.

Cannabis is non-toxic. It has numerous potent medicinal and health-promoting properties.

But if people in the United States (and Canada) had waited for government to move to end cannabis Prohibition, cannabis use would still be completely illegal today.

Individual Americans challenged these corrupt anti-cannabis laws in court – and won the right to legally consume cannabis.

Voter ballots have then forced individual states to legalize cannabis, either for medicinal use or full legalization. To date, only Illinois has fully legalized cannabis via government initiative.

It is a Cannabis Revolution. And it can be illustrated in two charts.

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