Just recently, a number of new states went on to approve of recreational and medicinal markets, including places like New Jersey, South Dakota, and Mississippi.
There is a growing list of illnesses and symptoms that people have been turning to medicinal cannabis for, including things like PTSD, depression, anxiety, pain, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and more.
Millions of people are accessing medicinal cannabis programs around the United States and in other countries and they have been doing so for years. But still, the government has been arresting those operating 'outside of their boundaries,' and many grey market dispensaries have been closed down along the way on the path to legalization.
This has meant that some people who spent decades working in the business, helping to serve the needs of patients while it was illegal and who helped work against the stigma in educating their communities etc, have been pushed out of the market altogether.
Slowly, support for cannabis legalization has been increasing.
This has been the result of the thousands of companies and activists, cannabis growers and users etc, and many others who have helped to play a role in getting this market to thrive.
They've pushed back against the ignorant cannabis stigma and worked hard to re-brand cannabis, to educate people about its benefits, to provide something of value in a number of forms. Cannabis is a lot more than just joints and bongs, which is what most might be familiar with when thinking about the cannabis market. It has made its way into culinary services and dozens of different food items, drinks, clothing, jewelry, perfumes, construction materials, pet food, lotions, and much more.
And today there is broad support around the country for cannabis legalization. One recent survey suggests that it might be somewhere around 68 percent of U.S. adults who agree with legalization for cannabis. This is a small increase from the support seen last year in other polls asking the same question.
Wasting Resources in Policing Cannabis and Other Drugs
When given the choice, people generally aren't going to think it's a common sense move to spend tens of thousands of dollars on policing cannabis users. If you ask the average person how much it costs to police this cause they probably do not know.
The growing support for legalization today shows that for millions of people they don't want to see someone spending years, or decades even, behind bars for a joint. It's an unnecessary drain on society and it's clear that people are continually seeing cannabis as less of a threatening substance, waking up to the lies they've been told about this plant for decades now.
The people should be given the freedom to grow their own, the injustices committed against those who have been victimized for victimless crimes should be reversed and rectified, and the state should stop making peaceful people into criminals because of policies that disagree with their personal consumption habits.
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