The marijuana market continues to grow rapidly as more states legalize the once-banned product.
Key Details
- As marijuana legalization has been sweeping the U.S., sales have been rapidly increasing.
- In the U.S. 19 states, Washington, D.C., and Guam have legalized marijuana for recreational use while 37 states allow some form of medical cannabis use.
- As marijuana slowly becomes legal the use of it has been steadily increasing and more Americans are becoming open to the idea sending sales skyrocketing.
Why it’s important
In 1996, California became the first state in the U.S. to legalize medical marijuana. Twenty years later, there are now an abundance of states that allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes and some that also allow recreational use for adults.
The weed industry has been hitting new highs in the last few years as more people become open to the idea of it.
Cannabis sales in the U.S. increased 40% in 2021 to $25 billion. While that’s not as much of an increase as the 67% jump 2020 saw, it still easily surpassed the $18 Billion in sales from 2020, according to BofA Securities.
While marijuana still isn’t legal in all 50 states, most adults are in favor of legalization.
In April of 2021, Pew Research Center found that 91% of U.S. adults are on board with marijuana legalization, with 60% supporting medical and recreational, and 31% supporting just medical. Only 8% of adults were against legalization altogether.
The marijuana market is expected to reach $32 billion in annual sales by the end of 2022, after reaching over $25 million in 2021.
Wall Street analysts suspect the industry will be worth substantially more by 2030, projecting its value to reach $100 billion, says BusinessInsider. Considering how much the market has increased in the past few years, that’s definitely a possibility.
