As the cannabis business arena expands at a rapid rate, investors, Wall Street, the marijuana community and the public in general are all wondering what it will eventually mean. Will there be an even bigger boon? Are we looking at more than a cash crop on the business side of things? How do we keep compassion in the equation?
Marijuana Business Daily just published its yearly “Factbook,” meant to educate everyone from investor to practitioner to imbiber on what’s coming down the pike. It makes well informed predictions with a lot of elbow grease reporting. Here are a few of the main tidbits that will have people buzzing:
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The expanded legal market is expected to hit quadruple numbers by 2022, while medical marijuana is expected to double in size. According to The Motley Fool, this shows that business minded cannabis investors and entrepreneurs should likely focus on the recreational side of things. Get in early though, as in yesterday if possible. There is always the chance of a market saturation point or bubble associated with this type of balloon growth.
California is expected to rake in a half a billion in recreational sales alone this year, contributing to the statistics revolving around 2018 growth across the states. It’s estimated that sales will have expanded 42 percent by the end of 2018, bringing the sales from between $5.8 and $6.6 billion from last year to $7.9 and $9.7 billion this year. The average of each breaks down to over 40 percent growth.
Jobs growth in the industry is estimated to reach 21 percent by 2022, an astounding number compared to other, though perhaps more established, industries. There are approximately 125,00 to 160,000 people employed in the cannabis realm as of now, but by 2022 there are expected to be around 340,000. That’s a pretty big leap and will mean the world to hundreds of thousands of people who are either unemployed or underemployed.
The final statistic is utterly amazing. It is predicted that if cannabis were to be legalized across the board in the U.S. that its sales would surpass those of the cigarette companies. Though smoking cigarettes is thankfully on the decline, they still brought in over $93 billion in 2016. Of course, cannabis would have to be descheduled at the federal level for this to happen, but with more senators getting on board with the concept and with reports like these demonstrating market potential, the future for legalized cannabis looks bright indeed.
