"I like not having to go behind the dumpster at a Taco Bell"

Paid subscribers get early access to the report because they help keep Parabola’s research free for everyone and independent of corporate funding.

Most research on legal cannabis counts things, like arrest rates, emergency room visits, and how many adults are using cannabis. That work matters, but it almost never asks the people actually living in these markets what the experience is like, or how state policy shapes the way consumers understand and navigate that market. That’s the gap Parabola Center set out to fill this spring with our new research. We talked with 37 people across the nine states where adult-use cannabis has been legal the longest, everywhere from Massachusetts to Alaska, and asked them how legalization is really going where they live.

People talked about the relief of not getting arrested anymore, about how much less shame there is around it, about walking into a shop and knowing the product is tested instead of taking their chances, about empty storefronts filling back up. And they were just as clear about what isn’t working: a market that keeps getting regulated into the hands of a few big companies while the small operators get squeezed out, tax money that felt like it never quite reached the communities it was promised to, and concerns about potency. One person in Oregon summed it up better than we could, when they said the best part of legalization was “not having to go behind the dumpster at a Taco Bell.” We liked that so much we named the report after it.

Paid subscribers can read the report below, ahead of its August 1st release on our website. Let us know your thoughts!

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