Introduction to the Special Issue on Cannabis Policy in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Administration and Policy

Abstract

The state-legal cannabis industry has grown rapidly over the last few years. The decline of cannabis prohibition enforcement by the federal government and the adoption of medical and adult-use programs in the states have pushed the logic of prohibition to the brink. Even so, the legacy of federal and state prohibition looms over nearly every move that those in industry and policy administration make. Retail sales of medical and recreational cannabis were expected to reach $33 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach over $50 billion by 2026 (Editors 2022). Seemingly impervious to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cannabis market in the United States grew by 51% in 2022 (Fortune Business Insights 2021). In fact, the pandemic helped to accelerate cannabis access as many states largely deemed the product to be an essential service, ushering in expanded online ordering, pickup, and delivery of product. While only 23 percent of the U.S. population lives in a state without comprehensive medical or recreational marijuana, many of those live close enough to a bordering state-legal program. With cannabis remaining under federal prohibition, however, the states, the industry, and consumers face a variety of ongoing challenges.Cannabis liberalization is also part of a serious reconsideration of the fifty-year War on Drugs that has been building in the United States. Mass incarceration's devastating effects on communities of color have been widely recognized (Alexander 2010), but drug policy reform has been slow and tenuous. The states have driven the liberalization of American drug policy since California adopted the first comprehensive medical cannabis program in 1996. To date, 38 states have comprehensive medical cannabis programs and 19 have adult-use recreational. Liberalization is now in the process of expanding with consideration and adoption of broad decriminalization measures and medicinal psylocibin mushroom programs. For all this growth and change, however, cannabis, among other substances, remains federally prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The federal government has been fickle in its enforcement of the CSA, which has led to confusion and uncertainty in the nascent, but substantial, industry Cunningham 2020, Adler 2020).