Medical and recreational marijuana sales in the US will reach $11.7 billion this year, according to cannabis analytics firm New Frontier Data. It has predicted a 25 percent increase for 2019.
Overall, the American legal weed industry could be worth $25 billion in seven years, the researcher said.
“With a number of states expected to advance cannabis legalization measures in the next 24 months, more Americans will be able to access legal cannabis in the years to come, making this a watershed 4/20,” said New Frontier Data’s chief executive officer, Giadha Aguirre De Carcer.
April 20 (or 4/20) is the day thousands of Americans gather around the country every year to celebrate and smoke marijuana, which remains illegal in most of the country.
Nine states – Alaska, California, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, Vermont and Washington, along with Washington DC – have already legalized recreational pot use, although not all of them permit and tax sales. The states with legalized marijuana sales have collected more than $1.6 billion in taxes since the programs began.
The number of weed legalization supporters in the US has grown by more than 60 percent since 2000, showed a January 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center. Back then, less than 25 percent backed the idea to legalize the herb.
Last year’s US legal weed sales also saw a sharp increase, with total purchases growing by 30 percent.
“Every day we wake up and build this industry. And every day we do that, it’s a little harder to shut it down,” Daniel Yi, a spokesman for the California-based marijuana powerhouse MedMen, told USA Today.
Experts say the numbers are likely to rise rapidly thanks to what cannabis entrepreneurs see as approval from the Trump administration. Last month, US Senator Cory Gardner said President Donald Trump promised him he'd respect states' rights when it comes to legal pot and will support a federal-level change to bring consistency. Several members of Congress have introduced bills to either legalize cannabis entirely or at least remove it as a Schedule 1 controlled substance.
According to Isaac Dietrich, CEO of marijuana services firm MassRoots: “By supporting this law, President Trump has arguably done more to advance the growth of the regulated cannabis industry than any other president.”
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