What happened

As 2021 burns down to a nub, prospects are looking good for a greener 2022 for cannabis investors -- and a new report from MarijuanaMoment.net is sending shares of marijuana stocks higher today.

As of 11:30 a.m. ET, shares of

  • Green Thumb Industries (GTBIF 2.46%) are up 2.4%.
  • Charlotte's Web Holdings (CWBHF -5.65%) are up 3.8%.
  • Canopy Growth (CGC -0.66%) are gaining 4.8%.
  • Tilray (TLRY) are up 5.5%.
  • And Sundial Growers (SNDL -3.38%) is leading the whole pack higher with a 6.1% gain.
Map of America with a bag of marijuana, joints, and a scale within the outline.

Image source: Getty Images.

So what

Surveying the legislative landscape, MM rounded up all the changes marijuana markets across the U.S. can expect beginning on Jan. 1, 2022. Specifically:

In Montana, recreational marijuana will become legal to sell on the first day of the New Year.

California and Louisiana will both expand access to medical marijuana for their citizens, while Arkansas will go a step further and permit "out-of-state medical marijuana patients to access the state's program and purchase cannabis for up to 90 days." Conversely, Colorado will reduce the amount of medical marijuana that a patient can purchase per day -- by 80%!

And back on the legalization side of things, the City of Philadelphia will ban most employee drug testing for marijuana.

Now what

Personally, though, I have to say -- my major impression of these changes is that they're pretty penny-ante stuff. We're not seeing a large number of states turning "green" this year -- not the way we did in years past.

Then again, by this point marijuana has become legal in so many states that I suppose it's becoming hard to find new places to legalize the stuff. Across the nation, only 13 states (about 25% of them) don't yet permit marijuana use at least for medicinal purposes. In 25 states, marijuana use for even recreational purposes is now fully legal.  

And of course, while it doesn't look as if any new states will be going the fully legal route this year -- at least not immediately -- the start of a new year brings with it potential for marijuana legalization at the national level. Granted we had these same hopes at the beginning of 2021, and that didn't work out so well.

But with marijuana investors, it seems, hope springs eternal.