Where is Marijuana Legal?

As recently as a decade ago, marijuana legalization was still considered an unthinkable topic. A lot has changed in a short amount of time. Today, 47 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized marijuana in one form or another, and 6 in 10 Americans back full marijuana legalization.

With the rapid rise in the popularity of marijuana, many people are asking the question– Where is marijuana legal? Unfortunately, the answer to that question isn’t so straightforward because marijuana laws in the United States are complex.

On the federal side, marijuana in all forms has been illegal since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. Under that federal statute, marijuana and its intoxicating compound THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) are classified as Schedule I substances, the most tightly restricted category reserved for drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

Despite marijuana remaining illegal at the federal level, over the past two and a half decades a growing number of states have passed their own policies legalizing marijuana in some capacity. Today, a majority of Americans live in states with some form of legalized marijuana access.

Conflicting state and federal marijuana laws can make it challenging to know what states have legalized marijuana and whether marijuana is legal where you live.

With this marijuana legalization map, you’ll be able to quickly see how marijuana law has rapidly changed across the U.S. over the past 20-plus years, and what the marijuana laws currently look like in your state.

Now that you better understand the complexity of U.S. marijuana laws, let’s again take on the question– Where is marijuana legal?

Our interactive marijuana legalization map makes it easy to determine which states have legalized marijuana and at what capacity. Our color-coded system provides a visual, at-a-glance summary of marijuana legalization across the U.S. Quickly see which states have legalized both medical and recreational marijuana, which permit medical marijuana only, which offer limited medical cannabis access, and which do not make marijuana legal for any purpose.

Looking for more info on marijuana states? Our interactive marijuana legalization map allows you to click on a state, revealing a pop-up window with more details about that state’s current marijuana laws. There, you’ll find information on any pending marijuana legislation, available polling data on marijuana, and any marijuana tax revenue calculations or estimates. We’ve also included each state’s rate of opioid-involved overdose deaths, as a growing body of evidence suggests that the legalization of marijuana might be associated with decreased prescription opioid use and overdose deaths.

For more in-depth information on the marijuana laws of a particular state, simply click ‘More Information’ within the pop-up window and you’ll be sent to that state’s respective law overview page. You can also search for marijuana laws by state. Simply use the drop-down menu to select the state you’d like more information on.

While the federal government doesn’t recognize marijuana’s medical potential, 60 percent of U.S. states have laws legalizing the use of medical marijuana in 2019.

California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in defiance of federal law in 1996. Two years later, Washington State and Oregon followed suit.

Today, there are 33 states with comprehensive public medical marijuana programs in their books.

The states where medical marijuana is legal include Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico have also legalized medical marijuana.

Each medical marijuana state approaches the issue differently. The conditions that qualify for medical marijuana and the amount of marijuana a patient can possess at one time vary. Some states allow patients to purchase marijuana products from dispensaries and grow their own plants at home, while others limit access to either dispensaries or home cultivation.

An additional 14 states have passed highly restrictive medical marijuana laws that offer limited medical cannabis access. The states with limited medical cannabis access include: Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. These states currently only give patients access to cannabis products, most often in the form of cannabis oil, that are very low in THC. As of July 1, 2019, Kansas residents that have obtained a doctor’s letter can legally bring back low THC cannabis oil from states where it’s legal and administer it.

Medical marijuana legalization also has a lot of popular support, and marijuana is increasingly acknowledged for its potential therapeutic application by doctors, researchers, and lawmakers. A growing body of research supporting marijuana’s use for medical purposes and an increased demand for safer treatment alternatives will likely lead to even more states legalizing medical marijuana in the future.

In Ohio, lawmakers are working to present a recreational marijuana referendum on the November 2019 ballot, pending review by state officials. The Ohio Marijuana Legalization Initiative would allow adults 21 and older to buy and possess marijuana.

There are also recreational marijuana ballot initiatives expected in Arizona and Florida in 2020. Arizona voters turned down a recreational marijuana measure in 2016, but favorability toward cannabis has improved since then. Florida’s medical marijuana program has been such a success since it launched in 2017 that recreational marijuana legalization seems inevitable.

In Arkansas, a local organization is currently collecting signatures for a 2020 recreational marijuana ballot initiative, the Recreational Marijuana Amendment of 2020. There has also been progress made in Montana, where a recreational marijuana ballot initiative, the Marijuana Regulation Act, has already been submitted to state election officials for the 2020 ballot.