How were Americans looking for weed (or “marijuana” or “cannabis”) in 2017?
Published: Dec 27, 2017, 10:17 am • Updated: Dec 27, 2017, 10:17 am
By Polly Washburn, The Cannabist Staff
As more states legalize cannabis in medical and adult-use forms, how are people across the country searching for information about various means of consumption?
A note about these Google Trends charts:
All charts are for searches in the United States with one exception as indicated. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term during the year. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. On state maps, 100 is the location with the most popularity as a proportion of total searches in that location, a value of 50 indicates a location which is half as popular. A higher value on a regional map means a higher proportion of all queries, not a higher absolute query count. So a tiny country where 80% of the queries are for “pot shops” will get twice the score of a giant country where only 40% of the queries are for “pot shops”.
You can compare the regional results to our map of where marijuana is legal.
Are they looking for “cannabis” or “marijuana”?
We ommitted the words “weed” and “pot” as they are involved in too many non-marijuana searches.
The states with the closest ratios of cannabis to marijuana in search are: Oregon (1.6 times as many searches for marijuana to cannabis), Washington (1.75), California (1.9), New Mexico (2), Alaska (2.1), Colorado (2.4), Maine (2.46) and Massachusetts (2.85), so legalization seems to correlate with increased use of the word “cannabis.”
That trend holds true, for our neighbors to the north, where “cannabis” is coming on strong in anticipation of next year’s legalization:
Canada
But what if it’s medical?
Medical marijuana interest by state
What’s in those brownies?
That spike is the baking holiday 4/20, of course
“Pot brownies” staying strong in a few states; but otherwise weed brownies have taken over.
And what do they call the place where they go to buy?
Vaping vs Edibles
Oxford Dictionary declared “vape” the word of the year in 2014, and it’s still going strong in 2017.
What to put it in?
Still plenty of old-school bong action happening, apparently
What do they want in topicals?
Finally, who’s concerned about Jeff Session’s thoughts on marijuana?
What words would you be interested in seeing trends for? Let us know in the comments.
Topics: google trends, lexicon, medical marijuana, public opinion, Vaping 
Polly Washburn
Polly joined The Cannabist in December 2016 as a digital producer. She has been creating print, web and video content for a couple of decades. She returned to her home town of Denver in 2012 after living in eleven other cities in four countries, and…
