Number of the Day
The Legal Marijuana Industry Reaches New Highs, by the Numbers
Cannabis will soon be legal in some form in 36 U.S. states but remains illegal at the federal level
$17.7 billion: That’s how much people spent on legal marijuana around the world last year, 88% of which is accounted for by North America, according to a report from Grand View Research cited by Inc.
Grand View projects that the market for legal cannabis will be worth $73.6 billion by 2027, and the results of various ballot measures in last week’s election make it likely that much of this expansion will be in the United States. Voters have paved the way to legalize medical marijuana in 36 states and recreational weed in 15, with Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Montana all joining the latter category last week.
The market for legal weed is still far behind that for alcohol, which is worth $232 billion in the United States alone, but as Steve LeVine noted in Marker, the hedonism economy was a big winner in last week’s election, and the numbers projecting the cannabis market’s expansion point to how much room that economy has to grow.
The election news sent share prices of cannabis companies surging, such as the struggling Canada-based…
