Legal Marijuana Blooms into the Fastest-Growing Industry in America

Inc.Com ^ | Jan. 27, 2015

[Wolfie]

Legal Marijuana Blooms into the Fastest-Growing Industry in America

Back in 1938, Popular Mechanics ran an article about how cannabis (specifically, hemp) was the new "billion dollar crop." It may have taken nearly eight decades, but according to a report released this week, the legal cannabis industry is now worth well over twice that.

The report by ArcView Market Research, the research arm of cannabis-focused angel investor network The ArcView Group, finds that the U.S. cannabis industry has a value of $2.7 billion. That's a 74 percent increase from 2013, making it the fastest-growing industry in the country.

If all 50 states were to legalize sales of recreational marijuana, the market would be larger than the organic food industry, with a value of $36.8 billion, ArcView's "State of Legal Marijuana Markets" report finds.

To date, 23 states have legalized medical marijuana. Colorado and Washington state have legalized recreational cannabis for adults over 21. Voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. approved recreational cannabis as well, but the retail industry is not yet off the ground in Alaska and Oregon and Congress has banned retail sales in the nation's capital.

The report predicts that in the next five years 14 other states will adopt recreational sales and two more states will legalize medical cannabis. ArcView says by 2019, the new legal markets and "maturation of the existing markets" will produce a $10.8 billion market.

Interestingly enough, Colorado is not the biggest cannabis market, according to the report. California, which legalized medical sales in 1996, leads all states at $1.3 billion. The report also says that five states now boast marijuana markets worth more than $100 million.

The success in Colorado and Washington is not due to corporate America. Instead, the legal marijuana market in America has grown thanks to entrepreneurs and private investors--"sophisticated players" who "capitalized on the seismic shifts occurring in the regulatory environment," CEO of the ArcView Group Troy Dayton says in the report.

As the recreational marijuana market in those states continues to mature, public perception also has changed, Dayton says. "In the last year, the rise of the cannabis industry went from an interesting cocktail conversation to being taken seriously as the fastest growing industry in America," he says. "At this point, it's hard to imagine that any serious businessperson who is paying attention hasn't spent some time thinking about the possibilities in this market."

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

You can't successfully win a "war on drugs" without creating an internal police state so comprehensive that Himmler or Beria would moan with envy.

I don't have a problem with some drugs being illegal if that's what the voters want, but the totalitarian excesses of the WOD must be rolled back.

[freepersup]

Tobacco is the window drug to alcohol and alcohol is the window drug to ALL of the other drugs in use by society, especially and in particular prescription drugs- which you so conveniently fail to discuss or reference. Special note to children being prescribed pharmaceuticals for every imaginable ailment known and unknown.

I have nothing further to say to you for waste of oxygen is certain. In fairness, and expectation, a response by you is anticipated. Please save your time and Jim Thompson's bandwith by refraining from your usual infantile postings of images of psychotic killers under the guise of marijuana induced behaviors. The rest of us posting here can find correlating links to psychotic killers under the influence of prescription drugs and widespread use of alcohol. YOU have the myopic view on pot.

[Ken H]

Demographics all but guarantee it will grow faster in the future. Exit poll results for the FL medical MJ vote, which got 58% of the vote, 2 short of the 60% needed to pass =>

___________________________________________________________________

Age => Yes / No

18-24 => 83% / 17%

25-29 => 75% / 25%

30-39 => 68% / 32%

40-49 => 63% / 37%

50-64 => 58% / 42%

65 + => 38% / 62%

__________________________________________________________________

www.nbcnews .com/politics/elections/2014/FL/I1/exitpoll

[gundog]

Imagine if, when Prohibition was repealed, instead of shielding children from harmful exposure to alcohol, state and federal governments had essentially abandoned them to the glamour drinking culture.

You mean the way the country was before Prohibition?

[gundog]

Oregon is working on it. But it can’t be sold out of state under current law. Canada grows hemp mostly for seed...for feed and oil.

[gundog]

Another point lost on them is that people start with pot...

Usually after experimenting with tobacco and alcohol.