According to research by New Frontier Data, 263 million people claimed to have used cannabis in the past year, with 15.1 percent of those coming from North America alone. In total, 6 percent of the world’s population between the ages of 15 and 65 used cannabis in the past year.
Suffice to say, the worldwide demand is massive, and understanding its vagaries and scale is critical to developing appropriate regulations which reflect the reality of this large prevailing consumer market. Given that younger adults demographically support legalization at far higher rates than older adults, the expansion of legalization and normalization of social attitudes toward cannabis points toward a durable generational trend.