How Legal Weed Has Changed the US for Better, Worse: QuickTake

Turn an illicit product into a highly taxed and regulated one and you have a classic business experiment. Do it with a little-studied psychoactive substance that has both medical promise and addictive potential and you have a public health trial, too. That’s what the US has done with cannabis, otherwise known as marijuana, pot or weed. Changes in state laws since 1996 have given 74% of the US population access to some form of legal cannabis. Now President Joe Biden is taking steps toward decriminalizing marijuana on the federal level.

1. What’s been the impact of legalized weed?

It’s been ...