These are the only three American cities where residents smoke more cannabis than nicotine.
For a portrait of what marijuana normalization resembles, look no farther than Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland. Those are the only three American cities where residents smoke more cannabis than nicotine, according to analytics firm Nielsen.
In the past 30 days, more than 300,000 Seattle residents ages 18 and older have consumed marijuana products. That accounts for about 17% of the adult population within the city, reports The Seattle Times. That outpaces use of nicotine or tobacco products, which includes cigarettes and nicotine vaping devices. Around 16% of Seattle adults reported using nicotine products in the past 30 days.
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Portland, OR, meanwhile, rates as the city with the largest number of adult cannabis users. Approximately 20% of Portland adults have recently consumed marijuana products, but only 19% of them have recently used nicotine products. Las Vegas (18%) and Denver (18%) follow Portland for the highest number of cannabis users, with Seattle taking fourth place. San Francisco, by the way, is the only other American city where adults use more marijuana (16%) than nicotine (13%).
Nielsen polled more than 200,000 American adults nationally between January 2018 to May 2019 for the survey. They did not ask any participants if they were using legal medical marijuana products, or if they had obtained their marijuana through the black market.
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As you likely surmised, the cities with the highest percentage of marijuana users all come from states with expansive adult-use cannabis legalization and regulation. However, there is one city where that wasn’t the case — Albuquerque-Santa Fe.
According to Nielsen, 14% of the city’s adult population consumes marijuana products, which ranks it eighth among 70 metro areas. That means more adults in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe area use marijuana than areas where it’s legal, such as Spokane, WA, where only 12% of adults reported recent marijuana use.