Seattle metro area is one of just three in America where marijuana use tops nicotine, data shows

As more states legalize marijuana, the number of adult consumers has been on the rise. But there are only three major metro areas where cannabis is more popular than cigarettes and other products containing nicotine, according to new market-research data.

And — you guessed it — Seattle is one of them.

More than 700,000 people age 18 and older in the Seattle-Tacoma area — about 17% of the adult population — have consumed cannabis in the past 30 days, according to the data from the market-research firm Nielsen. That’s the fourth highest consumption among 70 large metro areas, behind Portland, Las Vegas and Denver. And it edges out the use of nicotine products, including cigarettes other tobacco products and e-cigarettes. Combined, they were consumed by about 16% of adults in our metro area.

The other two metros where cannabis is more popular than nicotine are probably not much of a surprise: San Francisco and Portland.

What these areas have in common is, when compared to the national average, a high percentage of cannabis consumers and a low percentage of nicotine consumers. Portland has the nation’s highest share of adult cannabis consumers, at 20% — that’s about 1 percentage point higher than nicotine consumers. [Read more at Seattle Times]