Timeline: Cannabis Legislation in the U.S.
At the federal level, cannabis is still considered an illegal substance. That said, individual states do have the right to determine their own laws around cannabis sales and usage.
This visual from New Frontier Data looks at the status of cannabis in every state and the timeline of when medical and/or recreational use became legal.
Cannabis Through the Years
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Marijuana is legal for medical or general (recreational) use by adults in most American states, but a truck driver can still lose his job because a United States government mandated routine drug test indicates he used marijuana.Some people will be quick to respond, “Good, I don’t want people driving big rigs down the road while high on pot.” But, as Paul Armentano of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) points out in a March 10 The Hill editorial, “Such tests are not intended to assess for marijuana-induced impairment, but rather, they are designed to detect wh