This article originally appeared in High Times’ Spring/Summer 2026 print edition. Get yours here.
Activists, investors, lawyers, growers and a plant scientist on what American cannabis legalization built, what it broke and where it goes from here.
By the Numbers
American cannabis legalization in eight stats.
$30B+
US cannabis industry size
70%
Americans who support full legalization
88%
Americans who support medical use
39
Divergent state cannabis programs
−97%
Cannabis ETF value since Q1 2021
462
Dispensaries open in New York
$6–8B
NY annual retail cannabis sales
0
States that have reversed legalization
Voices in This Piece
Keith Stroup, founder of NORML
Adam Smith, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project
Steve Schain, Smart Counsel attorney
Morgan Paxhia, co-founder of Poseidon Investment Management
Scott Vasterling, founder of Humboldt Family Farms
Dr. Zamir Punja, plant biotechnology professor, Simon Fraser University
Ricardo Baca, founder of Grasslands
Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML
John Mueller, CEO of Greenlight Dispensary
Suehiko Ono, partner at Cogent Law and founding member of Sun Grown Cannabis Alliance
The Megaphoner
Voices at the crossroads speak.
One minute this plant is a scraggly weed growing in the ditch by the side of a road or on the bank of a creek, the next it’s being sold to us as the new agricultural juggernaut—bigger than wheat, sexier than corn, the sixth largest cash crop in the U.S. and more dangerous than heroin (or so they say in Washington).
We know better. We know it’s truly a healing herb that has become a 30-plus-billion-dollar civic religion of smoke and mirrors, with happy shopkeepers peddling their version of joy to the masses.
Well, Americans can’t just love something. We have to mangle it, throttle it, slap warning labels all over it, treat it like toxic nuclear waste, and then regulate the shit out of …
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Author: David Hodes / High Times
