The Marijuana Industry in Washington State

Washington

By Yer Vang-Cohen

This map project highlights the Marijuana Industry in Washington State.

The Washington State initiative I-502 was passed in 2012 that legalized recreational marijuana use by adults 21 and over. In July of 2014, recreational marijuana sales began for the state of Washington.

The majority of the maps use the 2010 Washington State census along with data from Washington State’s Liquor and Cannabis board. The data from the board includes locations of all licensed Marijuana establishments split by Producers, Processors, Retailers and Medical Marijuana Licensees and their revenue sales since the legalization of recreational marijuana.

I focused three maps on Seattle since that area is the most populated in people and Marijuana establishments. The study “Monitoring Impacts of Recreational Marijuana Legalization / 2015 Baseline Report,” done by the Forecasting and Research Division of the Washington State office of Financial Management states that 15-24-year-olds are the biggest users of recreation marijuana thus one map illustrates this age bracket population. I also wanted to look at income for this region, highlighting a few census tracts that were below poverty level. There is another map for this region that highlights some of the zoning regulations for Marijuana establishments, this includes a 1000 feet buffer from Schools, Libraries, Public Parks and other retailers.

The last maps tackle two topics that I feel have been left out of most studies focused on the effects of the I- 502 law in Washington State: prison and jail statistics and the environmental impact of producing marijuana. One map compares county jail population in 2011 (before legalization) and 2015 (after legalization), more research is needed to re-focus this map on drug violations. It would also be interesting to see how much money is saved from housing inmates if the number of arrests have gone down. The last map references an article I read on the environmental impacts of producing marijuana, the study is done by Evan Mills that states for each pound of marijuana produced 3000 pounds of CO2 is emitted. I then found the average cost per pound of marijuana and used that number to find out how many pounds of marijuana is being produced in each county in Washington. This number then yielded the amount of CO2 emissions.