The Top 10 US Cities That Talk About Weed: Los Angeles, New York, And Denver Rank Highest
With medical marijuana now legal in 23 states — and recreational weed legal in four — the conversation about pot will only continue to buzz. Soon, weed as research, as medicine, and as business may no longer be a taboo topic.
But what parts of the country talk the most about marijuana? Denver may be the first to come to mind, since it was the first to legalize recreational use, but a new report from Aizman Law Firm finds this isn’t always the case. The law firm decided to see what U.S. cities mentioned weed on social media the most, so it analyzed geotagged Instagram posts hashtagged with the phrases #weed, #maryjane, #marijuana, or #420.
Los Angeles was the top city of marijuana mentions, followed by New York, Denver, Portland, and San Francisco — all of which are notoriously liberal cities. It’s also probably not a coincidence that New York and L.A. are the two most populated cities in the U.S. After San Francisco came Edgewater, N.J. in sixth place and Spring Valley, Texas in seventh. Seattle, San Diego, and Glendale, Ariz. came up last.
It’s not surprising that the top five cities were located in California, New York, Colorado or Oregon — as all of these states have some level of medical marijuana laws. In fact, Texas is the only state on the list that doesn’t have any laws allowing for medical marijuana use.
Interestingly, according to National Survey on Drug Use and Health statistics from a few years ago, Rhode Island ranked highest as the state where the most people reported smoking weed in the past month, followed by Alaska, Vermont, and Oregon. Vermont, in fact, may currently be en route to legalizing marijuana possession via legislation rather than voter initiative, meaning the state government might be beginning to see the benefits. Both Colorado and California, meanwhile, ranked relatively high compared to other states.
Of course, this doesn’t show what cities discuss weed the most on a political, social, or medical level; it’s simply an analysis of some Instagram tags. It does, however, remind us that marijuana is on people's minds in America’s biggest cities, and that the discussion doesn’t look like it will be fading anytime soon.
