New figures published today indicate that North America's legal Marijuana green rush is above the dot-com boom period of the early twenty first century in terms of industry growth. Last year, North America's legal marijuana industry posted a record $9.3 billion in revenue, a thirty per cent increase in revenue on 2015.
New research
The report, published by ArcView Market Research, a prominent cannabis researcher, predicted that the industry could publish sales topping $27.9 billion by 2021, assuming that both legalisation and annual growth continues.
Twenty one per cent of the total population in the USA now live in legal marijuana markets, the executive officer for ArcView Market Research stated. "Sales in Colorado, Washington and Oregon grew an astounding sixty two per cent between 2015 and 2016. As more and more states legalise marijuana, we are likely to see these type of figures across appearing nationwide."
A political issue?
Marijuana legalisation was an issue hotly debated in the recent presidential election, with president-elect Donald Trump suggesting that he may implement more stringent drug policies than his predecessor Barack Obama did. On election day, four states- California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine- all voted in favour of legalising marijuana.
Similarly, Alaska, Washington and Oregon voted in favour of recreational marijuana use in 2012.
Cannabis activists in North America have recently stated that they will be handing out thousands of free joints at Donald Trump's inauguration. Nikolas Schiller, co founder of DCMJ-a marijuana awareness group in Washington-said that protesters intend to demonstrate that cannabis reform is not a political issue.
"This is not a protest against Trump. It's an awareness building excercise. It doesn't matter what political persuasion you are."
Regardless of Trump's comments during the election campaign, legalised marijuana is evidently a burgeoning market that will continue to grow if other states follow suit. As the man that defined his campaign on the slogan "make America great again", the legal marijuana industry could, if handled correctly, provide thousands of new jobs across America. The president-elect faces a tough decision when it comes to marijuana: stand by an ideological statement made during his campaign or harness what is evidently a growing industry.
