Colorado and Washington were the guinea pigs for adult-use cannabis legalization following the passage of Amendment 64 and Initiative 502 in 2012.

In Colorado, specifically, implementation did not take hold until two years later, when sales reached $683.5 million in 2014. As Assistant Editor Andriana Ruscitto wrote earlier this month, Colorado cannabis sales were approaching the $10 billion benchmark after a record $2.2 billion in sales in 2020.

While adult-use cannabis offers a revenue stream for local governments, multiple business opportunities for entrepreneurs and products that consumers desire, legalization is only half the battle. Implementation strategies are key to successful markets, which was iterated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in her announcement last week to kick a voter-approved medical cannabis measure down the road, and also to kick a voter-approved adult-use amendment down the road even further.

That decision came after industry experts from Cannabis Public Policy Consulting said an effective, sustainable and functioning medical cannabis system takes 14 to 20 months to implement, and that no state has ever implemented both medical and adult-use programs simultaneously.

Meanwhile, California, which approved a ballot measure to legalize adult-use cannabis in 2016—20 years after it became the first state to legalize medical cannabis—is still trying to get its implementation right. Last week, state Sen. Nancy Skinner introduced legislation to help local governments manage the licensing and regulations required by state law. With those current constraints, the illicit cannabis market still outweighs the above-ground legal playing field, she said.

And for states currently considering adult-use legalization, implementation is a focal point. In Virginia, where both chambers of the state legislature passed bills and are moving quickly on the governor’s legalization proposal, lawmakers are running into some of the same challenges as other states pursuing legalization, contributor Raj Chander wrote this week. Some of those challenges include disagreements over license types, penalties for minors and the timing of implementation.

Without federal legalization, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, as lawmakers in each state have to devise implementation strategies that best suit their constituents.