Report Predicts That Cannabis Sales Will Reach $30 Billion By 2021

With images of cannabis leaves gracing the cover of Time, you know people in the United States are embracing the idea of pot as a commodity. Whether it’s gorgeous, powerful flower or carefully dosed delicious edibles, now that cannabis is legal for medical and recreational use in states all over the United States, people are investing a lot of money in cannabis consumption.

In early January, Arcview Market Research released a report that U.S. cannabis sales had reached $6.5 billion total in 2016. That’s a lot. Not compared to say, alcohol, which sells hundreds of billions in the U.S. each year. According to a new report, that number will only continue to grow.

GreenWave Advisors, a firm in New York City, recently released a report featuring projected data about the future of the cannabis industry. The report claims that annual cannabis sales in the U.S. will jump to $30 billion in 2021. How did the financial experts at GreenWave come up with that figure? A whole lot of existing data went into figuring that number out.

In order to find the projected cannabis sales in 2021, GreenWave utilized several data points, including current sales ($6.5 billion) and market share (39 percent CA, 20 percent CO 12 percent WA, 9 percent MI, 20 percent Other), potential patients (26.3 million), average amount a patient spends annually ($3,200), active cannabis users, (30 million) and the average amount each recreational cannabis consumer spends annually ($1,500). These numbers were taken into consideration, along with data regarding the new and upcoming cannabis markets, and the figure $30 billion was reached.

If you were to include black market sales of cannabis in the U.S., that number would likely easily eclipse that. As prohibition slowly ends all over the U.S., state by state, cannabis consumers will prove their worth to the economy with their dollars. And the rest of the world will be forced to see how legal cannabis is making its mark on the world.