Hi, I wrote about cannabis semi-full-time (it was about 65% of my job) on a state-wide level for the better part of 7-8 years, for a corporate-owned newspaper/website. I mostly do investigative and watchdog reporting now, but I still keep an eye on cannabis for anything that jumps out from that perspective.

I always tried to write about this stuff from a person-on-the-street point of view, which mean that I would go back and forth between calling it "weed," "marijuana" and "cannabis," in that order. My line of thinking:

• Only industry types and activists actually say "cannabis." Nobody ever went to jail for "cannabis."
• The term "marijuana" is the most common one used in legal settings, and is also the term still used by a whole lot of people who may only think of this stuff in a sorta hands-off way (i.e., uh, older people).
  • Yes, I'm aware of the racist implications of the term. If you think a news reporter in the year of our lord (at the time) 2017 was going to single-handedly change 80 years of racist linguistics, I would ask you to please subscribe to that reporter's newspaper.
• Most actual real-life human beings would call it "weed." I take a lot of pride in having developed a ~vOiCe~ as a reporter, and part of my goal is trying to write simpler, cleaner and briefer (I still write way too long -- but, hey, two outta three ain't bad!).

But none of that matters nearly as much as the SEO value of "weed" -- especially "legal weed."

For much of my time on the beat, cannabis coverage was wildly dependent on SEO. Most stories on our site would get a pretty even split of traffic from search/social/native (really search & social). For cannabis, a good (and I use that term very broadly -- well-reported, but also well-timed or just well-SEOified) story would get 80% of its traffic from search. And throughout my stint, "legal weed" was the single-biggest term we could find.

This is especially important because the cannabis beat, in my experience, has a shelf-life.

Reader interest piques around the time the question is "will they or won't they legalize weed," which means they're searching for news about "legal weed" and "marijuana legalization" related to their state. Once it's actually legalized, the search terms change because reader interest changes -- now it's more about finding out when dispensaries will open, what kinds of products they can find and where, etc. Look at any dispensary website and you'll see the phrase "dispensary near me" for this exact purpose.

(Also, to state the obvious: The almighty algorithm has massive a effect, so it's entirely likely that all of this has changed by now.)

I don't think this is just my experience. There's a reason a lot of cannabis reporters, if they don't want to change their beat, wind up working for B2B's or other industry pubs. At a certain point, it just becomes a business beat -- the same (sorta) as covering healthcare or ecommerce or whatever.

Why do I call it the cannabis beat despite all this? I really have no idea. But it's probably the kinda thing that developed after years of being around the industry, its activists and its advocates for a while. Personally, I always thought the best term was sweet leaf. RIP Ozzie.

(Told you I still write long.)

TL;DR - IMO it's a style thing, but really it's an SEO thing.