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Cannabis Legalization, From the Ground Up
Legalization gets argued about in the abstract constantly. I wanted to know what it looks like from the inside, in the states that have lived with it the longest.
What it is
I co-lead an IRB-approved qualitative study at Parabola Center with Faith English of Johns Hopkins, looking at how people in states with five or more years of legal adult-use cannabis actually experience it. I built the interview guides, run the interviews, and code the transcripts with a structured, theory-driven approach across more than twenty participants.
What we're hearing
The short version: most people living in these markets see legalization as a real improvement, and the stigma that shadowed cannabis for decades has dropped off sharply.
The part that's come up shortest is repair. The expungement and reinvestment these laws promised to the people the drug war hit hardest is the piece that keeps falling through.
Where it's going
I've shared early findings at the University of Illinois Chicago's Cannabis Research Institute and at Parabola's own research roundup, and the full findings are being released publicly in 2026.
The point isn't to relitigate whether legalization was a good idea. It's to show where market design falls short of what it promised, and what it would take to close that gap.