How many people smoke weed? According to polls taken this year 52% of Americans over the age of 18 have tried marijuana in some form. What if the actual number is higher? At roughly $53.3 billion being spent on cannabis in 2016 alone one would not be wrong in assuming so. Approximately $46 billion was made through illegal sale of marijuana, making up 87% of the total sales that year. According to ArcView Market Research legal marijuana sales will increase from $6.9 billion in revenues today to about $21.6 billion by 2021. Even the $6.9 billion is a 34% increase from 2015. Massachusetts, California, and Canada are currently leading the charge in legal marijuana sales with Florida beginning to get in on the medical side of things..Those that are in the industry, and even those outside it, would agree that a market for cannabis doesn’t need to be created, as with other would be billion dollar businesses. Because so many people already partake of the drug a customer base already exists. The only issue is that there needs to be a massive transition from criminal to legal. The demand is there just make it legal. In fact, in places where cannabis has been made legal black market sales have decreased dramatically where their business made up nearly a third of the market. Most of that now has transitioned to the legal market. The point is that even if you have no intention of using cannabis in any form it is safe to say that as more people are using it, the likelihood that this trend will reverse is highly unlikely. For this reason it is imperative that we as a culture learn as much as possible about the benefits of cannabis use before snap judgments are made.
