Politics, Punishment, and the Diffusion of Recreational Marijuana Legalization in the United States, 2010-2024

• In Event: The Diffusion and Implementation of Criminal Laws I

Abstract

This paper examines the recent diffusion of U.S. recreational cannabis legalization. We develop a basic conceptual model of state legal change, based on past work on justice reform, policy diffusion, and issue convergence. The model includes “bottom-up” factors such as resident cannabis use and perceived risk, as well as “top-down” forces such as partisan political control, state punishment regimes, and racial demography. We assess this model using event history models predicting the time until legalization. Legalization has diffused rapidly in states with lower incarceration, lower Black and higher white populations, and higher unemployment. These estimates are greatly reduced, however, once political partisanship, region, and resident cannabis use are included into our models. States with high use rates and states outside the South have been quickest to legalize recreational use. We find strong partisan political effects, with time-varying measures of Democratic legislative control being especially predictive. A competing risks analysis shows that cannabis use is a strong predictor of passage by both ballot referendum and by legislation, whereas partisan Democratic control only predicts legislative passage. We conclude by discussing how diffusion of recreational cannabis legalization has mirrored (and inverted) the partisan and regional patterns observed in other U.S. decriminalization (and criminalization) movements.

Authors

• Christopher Uggen, University of Minnesota

• Kathleen M. Powell, Drexel University

• Nathan W. Link, Rutgers University-Camden